No reason to believe that the South African variant will be dominant

LONDON – Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, deputy medical director of the United Kingdom, has played down the chances that a variant of the South African coronavirus will spread across the country in the coming months.

His comments, delivered at a press conference Monday evening, follow concerns that the AstraZeneca-University of Oxford jab shows limited efficacy against this particular strain, officially known as the B.1.351 mutation.

“There is no reason to believe that the South African variant will catch up with or overtake our current virus in the next few months,” Van-Tam said, referring to the UK mutation that was first discovered times in the south-east of England.

He said the “immediate threat” would come from the variant found in the UK, which vaccines have been shown to be more effective against.

South Africa said on Sunday it would suspend the use of the vaccine in its vaccination schedule after a study, which has yet to be peer reviewed, found that the AstraZeneca vaccine offered “minimal protection” against mild to moderate disease caused by the mutation found in South Africa. The drug maker AstraZeneca is now in the race to adapt its Covid-19 vaccine to the new variants.

Researchers from the University of the Witwatersrand and others in South Africa, and the University of Oxford, noted that the study was small, involving only around 2,000 volunteers with an average age of 31.

The University of Oxford said that “protection against moderate to severe illness, hospitalization or death could not be assessed in this study because the target population was at such low risk.”

Van-Tam added later Monday that early modeling data did not suggest a “transmissibility advantage” for the strain found in South Africa. He said there were currently a small number of cases in the UK, including 147 infections.

“I don’t think that’s something we should be concerned about at the moment,” he said.

– CNBC’s Holly Ellyatt contributed to this article.