Are new COVID vaccines needed? ‘Jury’s out’ Oxford scientist says | Al Jazeera

It is not yet clear whether the world needs a new set of vaccines to fight different variants of the novel coronavirus, but scientists are working on new ones so there is no cause for alarm, the head of the Oxford Vaccine Group says.

South Africa has paused a planned roll-out 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.”...