As parts of the world grapple with second and third waves of coronavirus infections, driven by mutations in the virus that make it at once more infectious and possibly deadlier, vaccine maker AstraZeneca has told an Austrian newspaper it plans to have a vaccine ready against the deadly South African variant by the end of the year.
With variants nicknamed after the countries that performed the genomic testing necessary to spot them, the actual differences depend on which part of the SARS-nCoV-2 virus that has been modified. While the UK variant, B.1.1.7, has proven more infectious, the AstraZeneca vaccine was found to be effective against it. However, the South African B.1.351 variant, may prove the vaccine’s anathema—preliminary studies found that the vaccine did not protect against mild-to-moderate COVID-19 from that variant. South Africa went on to suspend its use of the vaccine.
"AstraZeneca and Oxford University have started on modifications to the vaccine for the South African variant and we expect it will be ready by the end of the year, should it be needed," Sarah Walters, AstraZeneca’s Austria manager, told the country’s Kurier newspaper.
Walters said that even the studies saying the vaccine was less effective against the South African variant were “too small to draw final conclusions”.
Some EU countries have suspended and even halted altogether their use of this vaccine over reports of extremely rare incidents where the vaccine was linked to blood clots. However, consensus has been that the benefits of taking the vaccine outweigh the cons.
As one of the cheapest and most mass produced COVID-19 vaccines, this one has been dubbed the “vaccine for the world” and is likeliest to make its way to the majority of the world’s poorer countries due to its relatively more accessible storage requirements.
In India, a more infectious variant of the virus dubbed B.1.617 has already been found in the Uk, and is being investigated as a Variant Under Investigation (VUI).
