* South Africa puts AstraZeneca vaccinations on hold
* Study: shot gives minimal protection against mild
infection
* Britain says Astra shot stops death and severe illness
* Concerns rise over vaccine protection
(Recasts with South African variant, changes media identifier)
By Guy Faulconbridge and Kate Holton
LONDON, Feb 8 (Reuters) - South Africa halted the rollout of
AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccinations after data showed it gave
minimal protection against mild infection from one variant, but
Britain said the shot still stopped death and serious illness.
The novel coronavirus has killed 2.3 million people and
turned normal life upside down for billions but new variants of
the virus have raised fears that the world could be locked in a
cat-and-mouse battle for years with the pathogen.
Researchers from the University of Witwatersrand and the
University of Oxford said in a prior-to-peer analysis that the
AstraZeneca vaccine provided minimal protection against mild or
moderate infection from the so-called South African variant
among young people.
Professor Shabir Madhi, lead investigator on the AstraZeneca
trial in South Africa, said the vaccine's similarity to another
produced by Johnson & Johnson, which reduced severe disease by
89%, suggested it would still prevent serious illness or death.
"There's still some hope that the AstraZeneca vaccine might
well perform as well as the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in a
different age group demographic that I address of severe
disease," he told BBC radio.
Andrew Pollard, chief investigator on the Oxford vaccine
trial, said the South African study had shown that the virus
would, as expected, find ways to continue to spread in
vaccinated populations.
"But, taken with the promising results from other studies in
South Africa using a similar viral vector, vaccines may continue
to ease the toll on health care systems by preventing severe
disease," Pollard said.
While thousands of individual changes have arisen as the
virus mutates on replication and evolves into new variants, only
a tiny minority are likely to be important or change the virus
in an appreciable way, according to the British Medical Journal.
UK IS 'CONFIDENT'
The Astrazeneca COVID-19 vaccine prevents death and serious
illness and is effective against the main variants of the virus
in the United Kingdom, though people may have to have a booster
shot as it mutates, a junior health minister said on Monday.
"There is no evidence that this vaccine is not effective in
preventing hospitalisation and severe illness and death, which
ultimately is what we're seeking with these vaccines today,"
British junior health minister Edward Argar told Sky.
"The dominant strains in this country are not the South
African strain, there are a small number of cases of that, the
dominant strains here are the historic one we've had, and then
the Kent variant, against which this vaccine is highly
effective."
Argar said just 147 people had been known to have been
infected with the South African variant in Britain, though he
allowed that booster shots - such as against the common flu -
might be needed in the future as the virus mutates.
"It would be just be normal in a sense as we did with the
flu vaccine to update it to catch anything the virus is trying
to do to keep ahead of it," he said.
Sarah Gilbert, professor of vaccinology at the University of
Oxford, said efforts were underway to develop a new generation
of booster shot vaccines that will allow protection against
emerging variants.
"This is the same issue that is faced by all of the vaccine
developers, and we will continue to monitor the emergence of new
variants that arise in readiness for a future strain change,"
she said.
Among coronavirus variants currently most concerning for
scientists and public health experts are the so-called British,
South African and Brazilian variants, which appear to be more
contagious than others.
The United Kingdom, which has the world's fifth worst
official death toll with more than 110,000, has vaccinated
12.014 million people with a first dose. Around half a million
people have received a second dose.
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge and Kate Holton; editing by
Michael Holden and Angus MacSwan)
Astrazeneca (AZN)