The virologist suggested changes will need to be made to the structure of coronavirus vaccines currently available to ensure protection is guaranteed against new strains. Public Health England on Tuesday confirmed 11 samples of the Kent variant of the COVID-19 virus had shown signs of concerning mutations. Health Secretary Matt Hancock warned additional changes had been reported in the strain in Liverpool and Bristol, urging residents to be especially careful and further restrict their moments to avoid spreading the virus.
Professor Andrew Pollard, chief investigator of the Oxford vaccine trial, told Sky News: “We’re working very hard to produce some data on the Kent variant, because that has been circulating here in the UK whilst we’ve been running the trial over the last couple of months, so we should have some new data on that fairly soon.
“But I think most scientists are confident that the vaccines will have a good impact against that variant because it hasn’t picked up many mutations that should be avoiding human immune responses, whereas some of the other variants have absolutely been appearing in settings where there’s a need for the virus to escape from human immunity.
“And those are going to be much more difficult to block from transmission.”
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Health Minister Hancock however insisted the UK will be able to tackle coronavirus variants as long as people comply with the lockdown measures currently in place.
Eleven cases in the Bristol area have been identified as the variant that originally arose in Kent but are now showing the E484K mutation.
A cluster of 32 cases in Liverpool also have the same mutation but relate to the original strain of coronavirus that has been around since the start of the pandemic.
The South African variant – which also shows the mutation – is under investigation in at least eight postcode areas of England where cases not linked to travel have been found.
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A PHE spokesman said: “PHE is monitoring the situation closely and all necessary public health interventions are being undertaken, including enhanced contact tracing and control measures.”
The E484K mutation has been shown to reduce the effectiveness of vaccines in preventing people contracting COVID-19.
Asked if the new strains showed signs of being vaccine resistant, Professor Adam Finn, from the Joint Committee for Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) told Times Radio: “Yes, they do and that’s something that I guess we’ve expected all along.
“So it is going to be a game of catch-up going forward – the vaccines will continue to work, but as the virus mutates they will work less well and we’ll have to adjust them to bring them back up to top-level protection.
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“But that’s what we do with flu all the time. It’s not something that’s that alarming or unexpected really, but it is a reality.
“There isn’t a silver bullet, we’re not going to solve this problem overnight, it’s going to take time.”
More than 89 million people around the world have been vaccinated so far.
The highest number of vaccinations have been delivered in the United States, which has seen 26 million people vaccinated so far, followed by 24m in China. The UK has the third-highest number of vaccinations around the world with 9.2 million people.
In terms of percentage of population vaccinated, the UK, at 13.95 percent, has the seventh-highest rate behind Gibraltar, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Seychelles, American Samoa and Palau.