(Reuters) – Johnson & Johnson said late Thursday that its single-shot COVID-19 vaccine showed promise against the highly contagious Delta variant in a laboratory study.

An analysis of blood from eight patients in the company’s phase 3 trial showed that neutralizing antibody activity elicited by the vaccine against the Delta variant, first identified in India, was higher than against the Beta variant, which was first identified in South Africa.

The World Health Organization has said Delta is becoming the globally dominant variant of COVID-19, raising concerns over whether existing vaccines will work against it.

So far, preliminary data has shown that vaccines made by Pfizer Inc and BioNTech, AstraZeneca and Moderna are largely protective against Delta, with the concentration of virus-neutralizing antibodies being somewhat reduced.

“We believe that our vaccine offers durable protection against COVID-19 and elicits neutralizing activity against the Delta variant,” Johnson & Johnson Chief Scientific Officer Paul Stoffels said.

Disease experts believe the J&J’s vaccine may require booster shots of the Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna vaccines to be more effective against the Delta variant.

U.S. public health officials have said there is no clinical data to support such a move.

“The data should take center stage as the more-virulent Delta variant drives a global surge in COVID-19 infections and gains ground in the United States,” Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Louise Chen said.

J&J has submitted the data as a preprint to the bioRxiv website, according to a company statement.

Data from a separate study also showed that immune response in recipients of the vaccine lasted at least eight months. That study has also been submitted to bioRxiv by Dr. Dan Barouch of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, who developed the Ad26 SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, the statement said.

“The single-shot Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine generates a strong neutralizing antibody response that does not wane; rather, we observe an improvement over time,” Mathai Mammen, head of research and development at J&J’s drugs business, said.

SOURCE: https://bit.ly/3dAmQuA bioRxiv, online July 1, 2021.

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