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* UK says incredibly worried about S.African variant
* Vaccines may not cover S.African variant, ITV says
(Adds Public Health England response)
LONDON, Jan 4 (Reuters) - Scientists are not fully confident
that COVID-19 vaccines will work on a new variant of the
coronavirus found in South Africa, ITV's political editor said
on Monday, citing an unidentified scientific adviser to the
British government.
Both Britain and South Africa have discovered new, more
infectious variants in the coronavirus in recent weeks that have
driven a surge in cases. British Health Secretary Matt Hancock
said on Monday he was now very worried about the strand found in
South Africa.
Scientists including BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin and John Bell,
Regius Professor of Medicine at the University of Oxford, have
said they are testing the vaccines on the new variants and say
they could make any required tweaks in around six weeks.
"According to one of the government's scientific advisers,
the reason for Matt Hancock's 'incredible worry' 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's variant," ITV political editor Robert Peston said.
Public Health England said there was currently no evidence
to suggest that vaccines will not be effective against the new
strain. The health ministry did not immediately respond to
requests for comment on the report.
The world's richest countries have started vaccinating their
populations to safeguard against a virus that has killed 1.8
million people and crushed the global economy.
There are currently 60 vaccine candidates in trials,
including those that are already being rolled out from
AstraZeneca and Oxford, Pfizer and BioNTech
, Moderna, Russia's Sputnik V and China's
Sinopharm.
That has helped to lift global financial markets, but the
discovery of the new variants has raised fresh alarm.
Scientists say the new South African variant has multiple
mutations in the important "spike" protein that the virus uses
to infect human cells.
It has also been associated with a higher viral load,
meaning a higher concentration of virus particles in patients'
bodies, possibly contributing to higher levels of transmission.
Oxford's Bell, who advises the government's vaccine task
force, said on Sunday he thought vaccines would work on the
British variant but said there was a "big question mark" as to
whether they would work on the South African variant.
He told Times Radio that the shots could be adapted and "it
might take a month or six weeks to get a new vaccine".
BioNTech's Sahin told Spiegel in an interview published on
Friday that their vaccine, which uses messenger RNA to instruct
the human immune system to fight the coronavirus, should be able
to cope with the variant first detected in Britain.
"We are testing whether our vaccine can also neutralise this
variant and will soon know more," he said.
Asked about coping with a strong mutation, he said it would
be possible to tweak the vaccine as required within six weeks -
though it might require additional regulatory approvals.
(Reporting by Kate Holton, Guy Faulconbridge and Alistair
Smout; Editing by Mike Collett-White)
