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

UK’s health secretary Matt Hancock warned that coronavirus vaccines may be less effective against new variants of disease. Two new mutations of SARS-CoV-2 were discovered earlier this month-one in South Africa and or in Brazil. While UK has imposed stringent lockdown and strict border restrictions to curb spread of discovered variants, Hancock warned that re 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 extent of any potential reduced efficacy of vaccines, Hancock said that degree of that was still unkwn. However, he justified border closures and said that country needs a “precautionary principle” that says “let’s t bring se new variants back to UK.” Speaking in an interview with Sky News, health secretary also expressed his concern for new variants developing elsewhere in world.

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With over 3.62 million cases and 97,329 officially recorded fatalities, COVID-19 has hammered politics, ecomic and health of one of most developed nations. Meanwhile, Hancock said Sunday that three-quarters of U.K.’s over-80s have received a vaccine shot. He said three-quarters of nursing home residents have also had ir first jab. Britain is iculating people with two vaccines — one made by U.S. pharma firm Pfizer and German company BioNTech, or 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 vaccine that can allegedly work against all mutant strains, including ones recently detected in United Kingdom and South Africa. CBL says that it will able to roll-out vaccine in a year or so if trials are conducted quickly. 

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

(With inputs from Associated Press)

Im: Associated Press

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