new york us biotechnology firm moderna announced on monday that its covid19 vaccine has demonstrated a neutralising impact on coronavirus variants first found in the united kingdom and south africaaccording to a news release by the firm the two doses of the vaccine is expected to be protective against emerging strains detected to dateresults from in vitro neutralisation studies of sera from individuals vaccinated with moderna covid19 vaccine are showing activity against emerging strains of sarscov2 vaccination with the moderna covid19 vaccine produced neutralizing titers against all key emerging variants tested including b117 and b1351 first identified in the uk and republic of south africa respectively the study showed no significant impact on neutralising titers against the b117 variant relative to prior variants moderna saidthis study was conducted in collaboration with the vaccine research center vrc at the national institute of allergy and infectious diseases niaid part of the national institutes of health nih the manuscript has been submitted as a preprint to biorxiv and will be submitted for peerreviewed publicationthe company is advancing an emerging variant booster candidate mrna1273351 against the variant first identified in south africaa sixfold reduction in neutralising titers was observed with the b1351 variant relative to prior variants despite this reduction neutralising titer levels with b1351 remain above levels that are expected to be protective it saidaccording to sputnik british prime minister boris johnson said the b117 variant of the coronavirus initially reported to be 5070 percent more contagious has been discovered and it is likely to be 30 percent deadliercnn reported that david montefiori a virologist at duke university medical center said while hes cautiously optimistic modernas vaccine will work well against this strain he is still not surethe efficacy might be reduced somewhat but it may still be very effective he said as quoted by cnn and added hopefully the vaccine will still be 7080 per cent effectivethe variant first identified in the uk has also appeared in more than 45 other countries including 195 cases in the us the variant first identified in south africa has appeared in more than 20 other countries