Scientists are not entirely confident that Covid-19 vaccines will work on a new variant of the coronavirus found in South Africa, the ITV political editor said on Monday, citing an unidentified scientific adviser to the British government.
Both the United Kingdom and South Africa have discovered new, more infectious variants of coronavirus in recent weeks, leading to an increase in cases. British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on Monday that he was now very concerned about the thread found in South Africa.
Scientists, including BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin and John Bell, a Regius professor of medicine at Oxford University, said they were testing the vaccines on the new variants and said they could make any necessary changes in about six weeks.
“According to one of the government’s scientific advisers, Matt Hancock’s ‘incredible concern’ about the South African version of Covid-19 is that they are not as confident that vaccines will be as effective against it as the version. United Kingdom, “said ITV political editor Robert Peston.
Public Health England said there is currently no evidence to suggest that vaccines will not be effective against the new strain. The Ministry of Health did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the report.
The richest countries in the world have begun vaccinating their populations to protect themselves against a virus that has killed 1.8 million people and shattered the global economy.
There are currently 60 vaccine candidates under study, including those already launched from AstraZeneca and Oxford, Pfizer and BioNTech, Moderna, Sputnik V in Russia and Sinopharm in China.
This has helped to lift global financial markets, but the discovery of new options has raised a new alarm.
Scientists say the new South African variant has multiple mutations in the important “spike” protein that the virus uses to infect human cells.
It has also been associated with a higher viral load, which means a higher concentration of virus particles in the body of patients, possibly contributing to higher levels of transmission.
Oxford’s Bell, which advises the government’s vaccine working group, said on Sunday it believed the vaccines would work on the British version, but said there was a “big question mark” over whether they would work on the South African version.
He told Times Radio that the photos could be adapted and “could take a month or six weeks to get a new vaccine.”
Sahin, of BioNTech, told Spiegel in an interview published Friday that their vaccine, which uses messenger RNA to train the human immune system to fight the coronavirus, should be able to cope with the variant first detected in the UK.
“We are testing whether our vaccine can neutralize this variant and we will find out more soon,” he said.
Asked how to cope with a strong mutation, he said the vaccine could be modified as needed in six weeks – although it may require additional regulatory approvals.