Sir John Bell, regius professor of medicine at Oxford
University expressed doubts today about the effectiveness of available vaccines
against the South African strain.
‘The mutations associated with the South African form are
really pretty substantial changes in the structure of the protein,’ he told
Times Radio.
‘My gut feeling is the vaccine will be still effective
against the Kent strain.
‘I don’t know about the South African strain – there’s a big
question mark about that,’ he said in a report by metro.co.uk.
Sir John helped develop the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19
vaccine, which has been approved for use in the UK.
Vaccines are thought to be effective against the UK variant
VUI-202012/01, which is currently causing a huge spike in cases across the
country.
But he said the South African strain – called 501.V2 and
already found in two locations in Britain – is thought to have mutated further
than the Kent one which causes more concern.
The Covid-19 vaccines protect against the disease by
teaching the immune system how to fight off the pathogen.
Sir John explained that although there was no data yet on
whether the South African variant increases severity, ‘it’s increased the
infectiousness, probably by increasing its ability to bind to the human cells’.
He said the Oxford University team was currently assessing
whether the current vaccines would work against the mutant strains and there
was still ‘room to manoeuvre’ because the vaccines worked ‘much better than any
of us thought they were going to’.
‘I think it’s unlikely that these mutations will turn off
the effects of vaccines entirely – I think they’ll still have a residual
effect,’ he said.
Sir John added it was ‘perfectly possible’ to adjust
vaccines in a matter of weeks if necessary.
‘It might take a month, or six weeks, to get a new vaccine,
so everybody should stay calm. It’s going to be fine,’ he said.
‘But we’re now in a game of cat and mouse, because these are
not the only two variants we’re going to see. We’re going to see lots of
variants.’
The UK first detected the Kent variant VUI-202012/01 in
December after a rise of cases were linked to the strain.
A number of countries including Australia, Italy, Iceland,
Spain and the Netherlands have also reported the variant, now known as ‘mutant
Covid’.