Boris Johnson says he’s ‘very confident’ in UK Covid vaccines amid South Africa variant fears

The PM said all vaccines used in the UK 'are effective in delivering a high degree of protection against serious illness and death'
Daniel O'Mahony8 February 2021

Boris Johnson has insisted that all Covid-19 vaccines being used in the UK provide a “high degree of protection against serious illness and death”, amid concerns over the South African variant’s effect on the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab.

During a visit to a coronavirus test manufacturing facility in Derby on Monday, the Prime Minister told reporters: “We’re very confident in all the vaccines that we’re using. And I think it’s important for people to bear in mind that all of them, we think, are effective in delivering a high degree of protection against serious illness and death, which is the most important thing.

“We will be continuing to study the results, the effectiveness of the vaccine rollout, and that’s going very, very fast indeed, and we will be looking at ways in which the population is starting to respond to the vaccines as we prepare to say what we’re going to do in the week of the 22nd and what kind of roadmap we want to lay out.”

It comes after a study of around 2,000 people suggested the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine only offers minimal protection against mild disease of the variant and, due to the young age of participants, could not conclude whether the jab worked against severe disease.

Health minister Edward Argar said on Monday that Oxford researchers remained confident their vaccine could prevent severe disease for those affected by the variant and that booster jabs to tackle new strains are already in the pipeline.

Mr Argar said Professor Sarah Gilbert, from Oxford, who designed the Covid vaccine, had said “there wasn’t anything she could point to that caused her to be concerned that it would not be effective against severe forms of the illness, hospitalisation and death from the virus

.

He told BBC Breakfast that dealing with severe disease and people needing to go to hospital was “the key thing we are seeking to tackle here at this point”.

Mr Argar said booster jabs were already being developed to tackle variants, telling Sky News: “What we would all expect is every year we have our flu jabs, it would not be unreasonable to suggest something similar here.”

In US study of 20 Pfizer vaccine recipients, researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston found that the vaccine neutralises the virus with the N501Y and E484K mutation.

Some 147 cases of the South African variant have so far been identified in the UK, with experts warning these are likely to be the “tip of the iceberg” due to the fact they are the result of random checks on 5 per cent to 10 per cent of all positive tests.

Dr Mike Tildesley, who advises the Government as a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (Spi-M), said it was “very possible” the South African variant is already quite widely spread in the UK.

The South African variant accounts for around 90 per cent of new coronavirus cases in South Africa, which has put its rollout of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine on hold.

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