The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Hancock confident Covid vaccines can deal with spread of Indian variant
New evidence gives a “high degree of confidence” that coronavirus vaccines work against the Indian variant, Matt Hancock has said as he urged people to get jabbed to prevent the new strain spreading “like wildfire”.
The health secretary said it is “appropriate” to push on with the major easing of restrictions today despite concerns from scientists that it could be 50% more transmissible than the Kent strain.
He did not rule out the possibility of imposing local lockdowns to stem the spread of the variant.
Ministers are hoping surge testing and the acceleration of second vaccine doses can allow a safe opening up of the nation.
Mr Hancock said there are now more than 1,300 cases of the Indian variant in total and it is becoming “the dominant strain” in areas including Bolton and Blackburn.
But offering good news over plans to ease restrictions without unleashing a fresh wave of infections and deaths, Mr Hancock said there is “new very early data” from Oxford University giving confidence that existing vaccines work against the variant.
“That means that we can stay on course with our strategy of using the vaccine to deal with the pandemic and opening up carefully and cautiously but we do need to be really very vigilant to the spread of the disease,” he told Sky’s Sophy Ridge On Sunday.
“We have a high degree of confidence that the vaccine will overcome.”
Oxford University said the data is preliminary and it is unable to share the research because it is not yet written up in a manuscript.
But Sir John Bell, the regius professor of medicine at the university, said the result of lab experiments investigating whether the vaccine neutralises the variant “looks OK”.
He told Times Radio: “It’s not perfect, but it’s not catastrophically bad.
“There’s a slight reduction in the ability to neutralise the virus but it’s not very great and certainly not as great as you see with the South African variant. It’s rather close to the Brazilian version where the vaccine serum seems to be very effective in neutralising the virus.”
Mr Hancock warned the highly transmissible variant can “spread like wildfire among the unvaccinated groups” as he urged people to come forward for jabs when eligible.
“In Bolton, where we’ve seen a number of people in hospital with this new Indian variant, the vast majority of them have been eligible for a jab but not taken the jab,” he said.
The health secretary said there had been no known deaths from the Indian variant in Bolton of somebody who has received both jabs.
Five people have been in hospital with it after receiving their first vaccine dose, while one person who had received both doses had been admitted “but that person was frail”.
As government scientific adviser Professor Sir Mark Walport warned the pandemic is at a “perilous moment”, Mr Hancock insisted it is right to continue with the easing of restrictions.
People will be able to socialise indoors in homes, pubs and restaurants, and will be permitted physical contact between households for the first time in more than a year.
Sir Mark, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for emergencies (Sage), warned it will be “extremely important” to keep an eye on the numbers over the next few weeks.
“The problem is that the data takes some while to emerge, which is why there’s every grounds to be very cautious about the ability to open up in June,” he said.
“It’s fair to say it is a perilous moment. We have a variant that shows good evidence of being possibly significantly more transmissible.”