An army health worker prepares a dose of Covishield, the AstraZeneca / Oxford Covid-19 coronavirus vaccine produced by the Serum Institute of India, at an army hospital in Colombo on January 29, 2021.
ishara S. Kodikara | AFP | Getty Images
LONDON – Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, the UK’s deputy medical director, downplayed the chances of a South African coronavirus variant spreading across the country in the coming months.
His comments, delivered at a news conference on Monday evening, follow concerns that the AstraZeneca-University of Oxford jab shows limited effectiveness against this specific strain, formally known as the B.1.351 mutation.
“There is no reason to think that the South African variant will reach or exceed our current virus in the coming months,” said Van-Tam referring to the mutation in the United Kingdom that was first found in southeastern England.
He said the “immediate threat” would come from the variant found in the UK, against which vaccines have been shown to be most effective.
South Africa said on Sunday it would suspend use of the vaccine in its vaccination program after a study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, found that the AstraZeneca vaccine offered “minimal protection” against mild to moderate illnesses caused by the mutation found in southern Africa. Pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca is now racing to adapt its Covid-19 vaccine in the face of new variants.
Researchers at the University of Witwatersrand and others in South Africa, and at the University of Oxford, noted that the study was small, involving only about 2,000 volunteers with an average age of 31 years.
The University of Oxford said that “protection against moderate to severe illness, hospitalization or death cannot be assessed in this study, as the target population is at such low risk”.
Van-Tam added later on Monday that early modeling data does not suggest a “transmissibility advantage” for the strain found in South Africa. He said there were a small number of cases in the UK at the moment, allegedly 147 infections.
“I don’t think we should worry about that at the moment,” he said.
– Holly Ellyatt, from CNBC, contributed to this article.