UK minister says 'there are 4,000 variants around the world of COVID-19 now'

There are nearly 4,000 variants of the known novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 across the world and now all vaccine manufacturers including Pfizer Inc and AstraZeneca are trying to improve their respective candidates, said UK minister. While talking to Sky News, British  Vaccine Deployment Minister Nadhim Zahawi noted that it is “very unlikely” that the existing COVID-19 vaccines will be ineffective on the variants, but still the manufacturers are looking for ways to enhance the efficacy. New strains of coronavirus have been reported from the UK, South Africa and Brazil that appears to spread more swiftly than others.

“Its very unlikely that the current vaccine won't be effective on the variants whether in Kent or other variants especially when it comes to severe illness and hospitalisation," Vaccine Deployment Minister Nadhim Zahawi told Sky News.

"All manufacturers, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Oxford-AstraZeneca and others are looking at how they can improve their vaccine to make sure that we are ready for any variant - there are about 4,000 variants around the world of COVID now."

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World's first trial alternating vaccine doses in UK

Meanwhile, marking a first, Oxford on February 4 announced that it will launch a medical trial involving alternating doses of COVID-19 vaccine candidates created by different manufacturers. The trial will reportedly show whether the different COVID-19 vaccine doses created by AstraZeneca and Pfizer-BioNTech companies, can be used to alternatively in order to allow more flexibility in the pressured vaccine delivery schedules across the globe. Following the announcement of the world’s first such research including mixing of jabs, UK’s deputy chief medical officer Jonathan Van-Tam who is also responsible for the study said that mixing and matching could enhance immunity.

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The new government-funded clinical trial, dubbed as Com-Cov is taking place in the UK as an Urgent Public Health study by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and is being undertaken by National Immunisation Schedule Evaluation Consortium (NISEC) and the Oxford Vaccine Group. The innovative study has been backed by government funding of £7 million. The British government said in a statement that "the study will be the first in the world to determine the effects of using different vaccines for the first and second dose". The study will last for 13 months and will also monitor the impact of the different dosing regimens on patients’ immune responses.

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