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 South Africa has paused a planned rollout of AstraZeneca's vaccines
after data showed it gave minimal protection against mild infection
among young people from the dominant variant there, stoking fears of
a much longer battle with the pathogen.
AstraZeneca and Oxford University aim to produce a next generation
of vaccines that will protect against variants as soon as the autumn
before the Northern Hemisphere winter, AstraZeneca's research chief
said this month.
"There are definitely new questions about variants that we're going
to be addressing. And one of those is: do we need new vaccines?,"
Andrew Pollard, Chief Investigator on the Oxford vaccine trial, told
BBC radio.
"I think the jury is out on that at the moment, but all developers
are preparing new vaccines so if we do need them, we'll have them
available to be able to protect people."
Vaccines are seen as the swiftest path out of the COVID-19 crisis
which has killed 2.33 million people and turned normal life upside
down for billions.
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 South African variant among young people.
TARGET POPULATION
Protection against moderate-severe disease, hospitalisation or death
could not be assessed in the study of around 2,000 volunteers who
had a median age of 31 as the target population were at such low
risk, the researchers said.
"I think there's clearly a risk of confidence in the way that people
may perceive you. But as I say I don't think that there is any
reason for alarm today," Pollard said.
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 "The really important question
is about severe disease and we didn't study that
in South Africa, because that wasn't the point
of that study, we were specifically asking
questions about young adults."
The so called South African variant, known by scientists as
20I/501Y.V2 or B.1.351, is the dominant one in South Africa and is
circulating in 41 countries around the world including the United
States.
Other major variants include the so-called UK variant, or
20I/501Y.V1, and the Brazilian variant known as P.1.
An analysis of infections by the South African variant showed there
was only a 22% lower risk of developing mild-to-moderate COVID-19 if
vaccinated with the AstraZeneca shot versus those given a placebo.
If vaccines do not work as effectively as hoped against new and
emerging variants, the world could be facing a much longer - and
more expensive - battle against the virus than previously thought.
"As long as we have enough immunity to prevent severe disease,
hospitalisations and death then we're going to be fine in the future
in the pandemic," Pollard said.
Pollard said the South African government was right to look at how
it deployed the AstraZeneca vaccine because the original plan was to
use it in young adults - particularly healthcare workers - who were
not expected to get severe disease.
"It needs a relook at how best to deploy the vaccine," Pollard said.
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge and Kate Holton, editing by Ed
Osmond)
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