With the increasing number of COVID-19 variants and the available vaccines being ineffective against the change, on Monday, American pharmaceutical company Moderna announced its vaccine creates antibodies that effectively neutralise the variants first discovered in the UK and South Africa. 

According to Moderna, two doses of the vaccine are "expected to be protective against emerging strains", proving itself effective against the UK strain.

In the meantime, speaking at Monday's virtual World Economic Forum, the head of the U.S. Dr. Anthony Fauci, of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, expressed concern over the delay in the administration of the second dose of COVID-19 vaccines, as they have agreed to do in some parts of the UK.

"I can understand the reason why that is being done but I would be concerned about that because you don't get full efficacy until you get that second dose and if you allow some optimal efficacy you can actually immunologically select more formulations when you do that. So that's the reason why. It may not be the case, but it gets risky and that's the reason why we'd prefer to keep it on the time that the clinical trials said for the two that we deal with in the United States, Moderna, and Pfizer.", Dr. Anthony added.