The Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE was able to neutralise a new variant of the coronavirus spreading rapidly in Brazil, according to a laboratory study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Blood taken from people who had been given the vaccine neutralised an engineered version of the virus that contained the same mutations carried on the spike portion of the highly contagious P.1 variant first identified in Brazil, the study conducted by scientists from the companies and the University of Texas Medical Branch found.

The scientists said the neutralising ability was roughly equivalent to the vaccine’s effect on a previous less contagious version of the virus from last year.