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- AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot says his company’s COVID-19 vaccine “should continue to be effective” against mutated virus strains, The Sunday Times reports.
- “But we can’t be sure, so we’re going to test that,” Soriot told the newspaper.
- A new strain of virus discovered in the UK may be up to 70% more transmittable, according to Reuters.
- At least 7 people in Japan have tested positive for the new variant, The Associated Press reports.
- Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.
AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine is expected to be effective against mutant strains of COVID-19, including those discovered in the UK and South Africa.
“Until now, we believe that the vaccine should continue to be effective,” CEO Pascal Soriot told The Sunday Times.
“But we can’t be sure, so we’re going to test that,” he told the newspaper.
Pascal Soriot, CEO of AstraZeneca, in London in 2014.
Neil Hall / Reuters
As vaccine vials made their way around the world last week, news about mutated coronavirus variants also spread.
The first variant, discovered in the UK, had 23 documented changes. It could be 70% more transmissible and had already infected about 40,000 people in the UK by midweek, according to Reuters. The second variant was first found in South Africa, but arrived in the UK last week, according to health officials.
“This new variant is of great concern because it is even more transmissible and appears to have mutated more than the new variant that has been discovered in the UK,” said Matt Hancock, Britain’s health secretary, on Wednesday.
As tensions escalated, other countries closed their doors to visitors from the UK.
The new strain was discovered in Japan on Friday, brought in by travelers from the UK, according to Reuters. About seven people, including five who had traveled from the UK to Japan, tested positive, The Associated Press reported Sunday.
On Monday, Japan plans a total ban on foreigners entering the country, in part because of the new strains, according to The Associated Press.
Saying that the AstraZeneca vaccine will protect against coronavirus strains, Soriot echoed Ugur Sahin, CEO of BioNTech. There was a “relatively high” chance that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine would work against variants, Sahin said last week.
The UK government has signed deals for 100 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which was developed in partnership with the University of Oxford. That vaccine is the largest single order from the government, which has signed agreements for 357 million doses of various vaccines.
As of Christmas Eve, some 617,000 people in the UK had received doses of the Pfizer vaccine, according to official statistics.
The UK government is now reviewing the AstraZeneca and Moderna vaccines.
“The NHS in the UK is working incredibly hard to scale up the vaccination program as quickly as possible to make sure everyone on the priority list can easily get their vaccine,” said Nadhim Zahawi, the minister overseeing the deployment of the vaccine, in a statement.
