Results of laboratory tests, which were released on 20 January 2021, have indicated that the COVID-19 vaccine developed by US pharmaceutical company Pfizer Inc and its German partner BioNTech is likely to protect against a more infectious variant of the virus, which was discovered in the UK and has spread around the world, Reuters news agency reported on Wednesday.

These results, based on an analysis of blood of participants in trials, are based on more extensive analysis than those released by Pfizer last week.

Reportedly, Pfizer said last week that a similar laboratory study showed that its COVID-19 vaccine was effective against one key mutation, called N501Y, found in both of the highly transmissible new variants spreading in the UK and South Africa.

This latest study, which has not yet been peer reviewed, was conducted on 10 mutations, which are characteristic of the variant known as B117 identified in the UK, Reuters added.