(AA & The Muslim News): The Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine is effective against the South African and British variants of the virus, the companies announced Monday,

They cited a study published in the journal Natural Medicine that said the vaccine elicits antibodies that neutralized mutated versions of the virus that first appeared in the UK and South Africa.  This backed the results of a study completed by Pfizer and the University of Texas in late January.

Researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) at Galveston found that the vaccine neutralises the virus with the N501Y and E484K mutations.

A panel of human sera from 20 participants were tested by researchers after they were given the shot against viruses with key mutations.

“A limitation of the current study is that the engineered viruses do not include the full set of spike mutations found in the UK or S.A. variants,” the study warned.

The study was published after a separate study revealed Sunday that the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is less effective against the South African variant.

AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine has shown limited efficacy against mild disease caused by the variant first identified in South Africa.