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The vaccine manufacturer Moderna has started work on a booster for its Covid jab to improve protection against a new variant of coronavirus first detected in South Africa, The Guardian reports. 

The US biotech firm said it had launched the work “out of an abundance of caution” after research suggested the vaccine may be less effective against the variant than older forms of the virus.

Lab tests on the vaccine performed by Moderna and the US National Institutes of Health found protection was unchanged against the B117 variant first spotted in the UK in September, but antibodies against the variant from South Africa suffered a six-fold drop in potency.

The company said it still expected the vaccine to be protective because the antibody levels remained high enough to neutralise the virus.

The announcement came as scientists warned that the variant from South Africa, known as 501Y.V2 or B1351, may be more deadly than the virus that fuelled the first wave of infections. A study by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) found hints that the variant may have a higher death rate, but the work is preliminary and needs to be confirmed by more detailed studies.