THE Pfizer and Moderna vaccines don’t work as well against the coronavirus variant first discovered in South Africa as they do against the dominant virus strain first seen in United Kingdom, a new study says.

In the study, 10 blood samples were taken from people who received the Pfizer vaccine, 28 days after the second dose, and 12 samples from those who received the Moderna vaccine, 43 days after the second dose, Business Insider reported, citing a study published in Nature.

The goal was to find out how well the blood sample antibodies neutralized the original coronavirus, the variant from South Africa (called B.1.351), and the variant found in the U.K. (B.1.1.7). The key finding: The percentage of positive antibodies that neutralized the South African variant was 12.4 fold lower for the Moderna vaccine than against the original coronavirus and 10.3 fold lower for the Pfizer vaccine, the study says.(SD-Agencies)