Scientists are not entirely sure Covid-19 vaccines will work on a new variant of the coronavirus found in South Africa, ITV’s political editor said Monday, citing an unidentified British scientific advisor. government.
Both Great Britain and South Africa have discovered new, more contagious variants of the coronavirus in recent weeks that have led to an increase in the number of cases. British Health Minister Matt Hancock said on Monday that he was now very concerned about the beach in South Africa.
Scientists including BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin and John Bell, Regius Professor of Medicine at the University of Oxford, have said they are testing the vaccines for the new variants and say they can make the necessary adjustments in about 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 as sure that the vaccines will be as effective against it as they were for the British variant. ”ITV political editor Robert Peston said.
Public Health England said there is currently no evidence that vaccines will be ineffective against the new strain. The Department of Health did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the report.
The richest countries in the world have begun to vaccinate their populations to protect them from a virus that killed 1.8 million people and crushed the global economy.
There are currently 60 vaccine candidates in trials, including those already being rolled out from AstraZeneca and Oxford, Pfizer and BioNTech, Moderna, Russia’s Sputnik V and China’s Sinopharm.
That has contributed to the lifting of the global financial markets, but the discovery of the new variants has raised the alarm again.
Scientists say the new South African variety 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, meaning a higher concentration of virus particles in patients’ bodies, possibly contributing to a higher rate of transmission.
Oxford’s Bell, who advises the government’s vaccine task force, said on Sunday he thought vaccines would work for 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 recordings could be changed and “it 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 instruct the human immune system to fight the coronavirus, should be able to deal with the variant first launched in Groot Britain was discovered.
“We are testing whether our vaccine can also neutralize this variant and will know more soon,” he said.
When asked about dealing with a strong mutation, he said it would be possible to modify the vaccine as needed within six weeks, although it may require additional regulatory approvals.