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Scientists are calling for calm after suggestions that Covid vaccines may not protect people against a new variant of the virus that has emerged in South Africa.
Experts say there is no need to panic, even though Health Secretary Matt Hancock has said he is very concerned about the latest variant of Sars-Cov-2, which has emerged in South Africa and is said to it is highly transmissible, as it is the variant that was first seen in Kent.
There have already been some cases of infection with the South African strain in the UK.
“I am incredibly concerned about the South African variant,” Hancock said on BBC Radio 4’s Today show. “That is why we took the steps we did to restrict all flights from South Africa and movement from South Africa, and insist that anyone who have been to South Africa to isolate yourself. This is a very, very important problem. “
Hancock expressed concern after an interview on Times Radio over the weekend with Sir John Bell, the government’s champion of biological sciences and a key figure behind the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine, which has just begun to be used by the NHS.
Bell said he is not concerned about the efficacy of the vaccine against the variant that emerged in Kent and was rapidly spreading across the UK. But, he said: “I don’t know about the South African strain. There’s a big question mark on that. “
UK coronavirus cases
The Oxford teams were testing both variants to assess whether the vaccine would protect them.
“The real question is whether the vaccines will be adequate,” Bell said. They worked much better than they were supposed to at preventing disease, so some mutation in the virus was unlikely to completely inactivate a vaccine, but viruses adapted to survive.
“Now we are in a game of cat and mouse, because these are not the only two variants that we are going to see,” he said.
Experts say virus mutations are expected, but vaccines are likely to continue to work to prevent people infected with variants from getting seriously ill. However, they are closely following developments in South Africa.
“Viruses will mutate and new strains will emerge,” said Professor James Naismith, director of the Rosalind Franklin Institute. “The so-called South African strain has a number of changes and scientists are working hard to understand its importance. Some of the changes are quite significant, and therefore scientists are paying close attention. We still don’t know enough to say more than this. “
Ravi Gupta, professor of clinical microbiology at the University of Cambridge and honorary professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, has been working on how virus mutations are increasing infectivity. There was a need to find a balance, he said, “between warning people about something that might be important and creating panic, which I think is what is happening.”
Surveillance and control measures needed to be stepped up, he said, and the South African variant, like the Kent variant, had likely already spread to many countries that did not have the type of full genetic sequencing available in the UK and South Africa. . But no one should yet assume that vaccines would be compromised, he said.
“Vaccines are really vital in this fight. We need to get them out as quickly as possible. We believe they will continue to be effective, “he said.
Naismith said that a climate of fear would not help anyone. “For the general public, I would say think about our human nature. Many of us like a good scare and horror stories are an integral part of human culture, which means such things get a lot of coverage. However, a drumming of nightmarish scenarios about this new variant does nothing more than create anxiety because so little is known and there is nothing we can do about it at the moment, “he said.
