“Very unlikely,” Gupta agreed.
Vivek Murthy, nominated for President-elect Joe Biden’s general surgeon Vivek Murthy, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that “there is no reason to believe that the vaccines that have been developed will not be effective against this. virus”.
Vaccines produce widespread responses by the immune system beyond just those to protein spikes, several experts noted.
The possibility of the new strains being resistant to existing vaccines is low, but not “non-existent,” Dr. Moncef Slaoui, chief scientific adviser for the US government’s vaccine distribution effort, told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.
“So far, I don’t think there has been a single option that is resilient,” he said. “I think this special variant in the UK is very unlikely to have escaped the vaccine’s immunity.”
Bedford agreed.
“I’m not worried, because it would probably take many changes to the genetic code to undermine a vaccine, not just one or two mutations,” Bedford wrote on Twitter. But vaccines may need fine-tuning over time as changes build up and changes need to be more closely monitored, he wrote.
Murthy said the new strain does not change public health advice about wearing masks, washing hands and maintaining social distance.