Pfizer, Moderna vaccines effective against COVID-19 variants found in India, says study

New Delhi: The Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines appear to protect against COVID variants B.1.617 and B.1.618 first identified in India, researchers have reported in a new pre-print paper, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, CNN reported.

Based on lab experiments involving cell cultures, the B.1.617 and B.1.618 variants seem to be partially resistant to the antibodies elicited by vaccination, according to the pre-print paper posted to the online server biorxiv.org on Sunday (May 16).

"Thus, there is a good reason to believe that vaccinated individuals will remain protected against the B.1.617 and B.1.618 variants," the researchers from New York University wrote in their paper.