Minister: AstraZeneca 'confident' jab protects against SA variant

Vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi today said AstraZeneca is ‘confident’ its jab prevents serious illness caused by the South African coronavirus variant after early data from a small study suggested the vaccine was less effective against the strain. 

Mr Zahawi said he had spoken to England’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Van Tam this morning about the study as he insisted the vaccine ‘does protect against severe disease’. 

He said that through its own trials AstraZeneca is ‘confident that it does effectively deal with serious illness, serious disease and hospitalisation’. 

Meanwhile, Mr Zahawi revealed that the UK’s vaccine roll-out almost hit 1,000 jabs a minute yesterday as he said he believes the Government will have vaccinated all over-50s by May. 

A small trial of just 2,026 people in South Africa found the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab had ‘limited efficacy’ in protecting against mild and moderate disease caused by the mutant strain, which has been found in 11 people in the UK who have not recently travelled from abroad.

However, nobody died or was hopitalised during the study by South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand and Oxford University, which has not yet been published but has been seen by the Financial Times.  

The pharmaceutical giant said scientists have already begun adapting the vaccine to better protect against the new variant, with hopes a booster shot will be ready by autumn if required. 

AstraZeneca said it remains confident that its vaccine can prevent severe disease caused by the variant – and pointed out that the trial could not measure its effectiveness at preventing severe disease caused by the mutant strain because the median age of participants was 31. 

Nevertheless, the announcement will increase the temptation on governments around the world to introduce stricter border controls to control the spread of coronavirus variants – at least until updated vaccines are available or the threat is shown to be manageable. 

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