Scientists in South Africa are urgently testing to see if the vaccines for Covid-19 will be effective against the country\u2019s variant virus.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the most pressing question facing us right now,\u201d said Dr Richard Lessells, an infectious diseases expert who is working on the country\u2019s genomic studies of the variant.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are urgently doing experiments in the laboratory to test the variant,\u201d Lessells told the Associated Press<\/a> <\/strong>on Monday (4 January). This is being done against the blood of people with antibodies and against the blood of people who have received vaccines.<\/p>\n The tests, called neutralising assays, will help determine the reliability of vaccines against the variant, he said.<\/p>\n In an interview on Monday,\u00a0the UK\u2019s Health and Social Care secretary Matt Hancock said that he had been in discussion with Health minister Dr Zweli Mkhize about the new variant over the Christmas period.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m incredibly worried about the South African variant. That\u2019s why we took the action that we did to restrict all flights from South Africa, and movement from South Africa, and to insist that anybody who\u2019s been to South Africa self isolates.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a very significant problem. In fact, I spoke to my South African opposite number over Christmas, and one of the reasons they know they\u2019ve got a problem is because, like us, they have an excellent genomic scientific capability, to be able to study the details of the virus. And it is even more of a problem than the UK new variant.\u201d<\/p>\n Scientists are also not fully confident that Covid-19 vaccines will work on a new variant of the coronavirus found in South Africa,\u00a0ITV\u2019s political editor<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0said on Monday, citing an unidentified scientific adviser to the British government.<\/p>\n \u201cAccording to one of the government\u2019s scientific advisers, the reason for Matt Hancock\u2019s \u2018incredible worry\u2019 about the South African Covid-19 variant is that they are not as confident the vaccines will be as effective against it as they are for the UK\u2019s variant,\u201d ITV political editor Robert Peston said.<\/p>\n Hancock said that the second variant will make life \u2018much harder\u2019 as it makes it more difficult to control the spread of the coronavirus due to the variant passing on much faster.<\/p>\n
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