No reason to believe that the South African variant will be dominant

LONDON – Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, the UK’s deputy medical officer, has reduced the chances of a South African coronavirus variant spreading across the country in the coming months.

His comments, presented at a press conference on Monday evening, are concerned that the AstraZeneca-University of Oxford jab has limited effectiveness against that strain, formally known as the B.1.351 mutation.

“There is no reason to believe that the South African version will catch or overtake our current virus in the next few months,” Van-Tam said of the UK mutation that was first found in the south-east of England. .

He said the “immediate threat” would come from a variant found in the UK, against which vaccines have proven to be more effective.

South Africa said on Sunday it would suspend the use of the shot in its vaccination program after a study, which has not yet been evaluated by colleagues, found that the AstraZeneca vaccine offered “minimal protection” against mild to moderate disease caused by the mutation found. in South Africa. Pharmacist AstraZeneca is now fighting to adapt his Covid-19 vaccine to the new variants.

Researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand and others in South Africa and the University of Oxford noted that the study was small, involving only about 2,000 volunteers with an average age of 31 years.

Oxford University said that “protection against moderate to severe illness, hospitalization or death could not be assessed in this study because the target population was at such a low risk”.

Van-Tam later added Monday that early modeling data do not suggest a “transmissibility advantage” for the strain found in South Africa. He said there are a small number of cases in the UK at the moment, it seems 147 infections.

“I don’t think this should worry us right now,” he said.

– Holly Ellyatt from CNBC contributed to this article.