Coronavirus: scientists keeping close eye on new variant

Viruses mutate regularly, and often changes have no major impact on how they spread, infect the body or are fought by the immune system

BioNTech vaccine ‘highly likely’ to provide protection against new variant, company’s chief executive says

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Viruses mutate regularly and often the changes have no major impact on how they spread. Photo: AFP

Published: 10:00pm, 24 Dec 2020Updated: 10:58pm, 24 Dec 2020

A new strain of the coronavirus identified in Britain has grabbed global headlines, sparked lockdowns and travel bans, and sent scientists scrambling to understand its impact on the pandemic.

While experts remain optimistic that the variant, which is thought to spread more easily than other strains, will not impact the efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines in development and starting to be rolled out worldwide, research is under way to make sure.

But even if how well vaccines work remains unchanged against the variant, its emergence is a wake-up call for the potential of future strains to evade vaccines – especially as more people become immunised – and the need to monitor this, experts say.

“The mutation is a reminder of the power of the virus to adapt, and that [evasion] cannot be ruled out in the future,” Jeremy Farrar, director of Wellcome, a charitable foundation involved in Covid-19 vaccine development, said in a statement this week.

Viruses mutate regularly, and often changes have no major impact on how they spread, infect the body or are fought by the immune system. Compared with some other viruses, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 has not been shown to rapidly mutate.