Scientists are not confident that Covid-19 vaccines will work on a new variant of the coronavirus that occurs in South Africa, the political editor of ITV said on Monday, referring to an unidentified scientific adviser to the British government.
Both Britain and South Africa have discovered new, more contagious variants in the coronavirus in recent weeks that have caused an increase in cases. British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on Monday he was now very concerned about the beach found in South Africa.
Scientists including Ugur Sahin, CEO of BioNTech, and John Bell, professor of medicine at the University of Oxford, said they were testing the vaccines on the new variant and said they could make any adjustments within six weeks.
“According to one of the government’s scientific advisers, the reason for Matt Hancock’s ‘incredible concern’ about the South African Covid-19 variant is that they are not so confident that the vaccines against it will be as effective as for the British variant not. Robert Peston, political editor of ITV, said.
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 started vaccinating their populations to protect against a virus that has killed 1.8 million people and shattered the world economy.
There are currently 60 candidates for vaccinations in trials, including those already rolled out from AstraZeneca and Oxford, Pfizer and BioNTech, Moderna, the Russian Sputnik V and China, Sinopharm.
This has helped to boost global financial markets, but the discovery of the new variant has again raised concerns.
Scientists say the new South African variant has multiple mutations in the important “spike” protein that the virus uses to infect human cells.
It is also associated with a higher virus load, which means a higher concentration of virus particles in the bodies of patients, possibly contributing to higher levels of transmission.
Oxford’s Bell, which advises the government’s vaccination task team, said on Sunday it thought vaccines would work on the British variant, but said there was a ‘big question mark’ as to whether they would work on the South African variant.
He told Times Radio that the shots could be adjusted and that it could take a month or six weeks to get a new vaccine.
BioNTech’s Sahin told Spiegel in an interview published on Friday that their vaccine, which uses messenger RNA to instruct the human immune system to fight the coronavirus, the variant first detected in Britain, could handle.
“We are testing whether our vaccine can also neutralize this variant and will know more soon,” he said.
Asked about dealing with a strong mutation, he said it was possible to modify the vaccine within six weeks, although it would require additional regulatory approvals.