Breaking: Moderna (MRNA) reassures its vaccine effectivity against new Covid-19 variants

MRNA provides updates on studies with new Covid-19 variants.
Moderna vaccine sees no significant change in its effectiveness against the UK variant.
Protection against the South African variant is effective but at a lower level.

Ivan Brian FXStreet

Moderna (MRNA) provided some reassuring news on Monday as it appears that its vaccine is effective against the UK and South African strains of the Covid-19 virus. “Vaccination with the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine produced neutralizing titers against all key emerging variants tested, including B1.1.7 and B.1.351 first identified in the UK and Republic of South Africa, respectively,” the company said.

However, the news should be greeted with some caution as the South African variant does appear to be harder to protect against. Moderna (MRNA) says “a six-fold reduction in neutralizing titers was observed with the B.1.351 variant relative to prior variants”.

Moderna still expects its vaccine to be above standard-efficacy levels needed to protect against the South African variant. “Despite this reduction, neutralizing titer levels with B.1.351 remain above levels that are expected to be protective”.

Moderna (MRNA) shares are trading 9% higher on Monday in early trading.

The author has no position in any stock mentioned in this article and no business relationship with any company mentioned. The author has not received compensation for writing this article, other than from FXStreet.

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Author

Ivan Brian

FXStreet

Ivan Brian started his career with AIB Bank in corporate finance and then worked for seven years at Baxter. He started as a macro analyst before becoming Head of Research and then CFO.

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