Unclear If COVID Vaccine Will Work on South African Pressure: Top Researcher Sir John Bell

A top vaccine researcher has said it is still uncertain whether current vaccines will be efficient versus a new variation of the novel coronavirus that was first spotted in South Africa.

John Bell, a teacher who led the advancement of the AstraZeneca-University of Oxford COVID-19 vaccine, told Times Radio that the South African variant– dubbed 501.

Like the U.K. version, the South African strain also appears to be more transmissible than the initial.

These changes might possibly make vaccines less efficient against this version, according to Bell, although more research requires to be conducted in order to effectively comprehend this concern.

Bell stated that scientists were now looking at the “essential concern” of whether or not vaccines will be effective versus the brand-new versions spotted in the U.K. and South Africa– neither of which appear to trigger more major disease.

” It is not expected that this mutation is adequate for the ‘South African’ variant to bypass the protection offered by existing vaccines,” he said in a declaration.

A nurse administers a dose of the AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID-19 vaccine to a patient at the Pontcae Medical Practice in Merthyr Tydfil in south Wales on January 4, 2021.
GEOFF CADDICK/AFP through Getty Images