UK's health minister warns that vaccines may work less well on Covid-19 variants

The UK’s health secretary Matt Hancock warned that coronavirus vaccines may be less effective against new variants of the disease. Two new mutations of SARS-CoV-2 were discovered earlier this month-one in South Africa and other in Brazil. While the UK has imposed stringent lockdown and strict border restrictions to curb the spread of discovered variants, Hancock warned that there could be more undiscovered, lethal COVID-19 strains.

Read: British Firm Claims To Have Created COVID-19 Vaccine That Will Work Against All Strains

Commenting on the extent of any potential reduced efficacy of the vaccines, Hancock said that the degree of that was still unknown. However, he justified border closures and said that the country needs a “precautionary principle” that says “let’s not bring these new variants back to the UK.” Speaking in an interview with Sky News, the health secretary also expressed his concern for new variants developing elsewhere in the world.

Read: UK Vaccination Drive Expands As Virus Toll Nears 100,000

Read: Joe Biden And Boris Johnson Hold First Telephonic Conversation, Discuss US-UK Ties

With over 3.62 million cases and 97,329 officially recorded fatalities, COVID-19 has hammered the politics, economic and health of one of the most developed nations. Meanwhile, Hancock said Sunday that three-quarters of the U.K.’s over-80s have received a vaccine shot. He said three-quarters of nursing home residents have also had their first jab. Britain is inoculating people with two vaccines — one made by U.S. pharma firm Pfizer and German company BioNTech, the other by U.K.-Swedish drugmaker AstraZeneca and Oxford University. It has authorized a third, developed by Moderna.

Vaccine against all strains

This comes as British pharmaceutical company ConserV Bioscience Limited (CBL) claims to have created a COVID-19 vaccine that will work against all kinds of mutations. According to Daily Mail, CBL has created the vaccine that can allegedly work against all mutant strains, including the ones recently detected in the United Kingdom and South Africa. CBL says that it will able to roll-out the vaccine in a year or so if trials are conducted quickly. 

According to the report, the vaccine created by CBL gets the immune system to recognise parts of viral particles present in coronaviruses, including the ones that mutate a little. This means that the vaccine should be able to protect against all kinds of coronaviruses, including the new strains. 

(With inputs from Associated Press)

Image: Associated Press

Read: British Firm Claims To Have Created COVID-19 Vaccine That Will Work Against All Strains