The results of the South African study, which suggest that the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine offers reduced protection against the Covid-19 variant that was first identified, are in many ways “exactly what we would have expected.” chief investigator of the Oxford vaccine trial, Professor Andrew Pollard said on Tuesday.
I think maybe it’s the clue to the future here: that we’ll see new variants emerge and spread to the population, like most viruses that cause colds every winter, but as long as we have enough immunity to prevent serious illness, hospitalizations, and death, we will be fine in the future in the event of a pandemic, “Pollard told BBC Radio 4.
Early data released on Sunday suggest that two doses of the Oxford / AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine provided only “minimal protection” against the mild and moderate Covid-19 variant first identified in South Africa. The full study, which has not been published, included about 2,000 volunteers who were on average 31 years old; about half received the vaccine and half received a placebo.
Pollard said the study in South Africa “absolutely confirms what we know about the biology of the virus, which it must transmit between people to survive and which must mutate to do so, and it has already been done in South Africa. Africa and this will affect mild diseases in vaccinated people “.
“The really important point is that all vaccines (around the world where they have been tested) continue to prevent serious illness and death,” Pollard stressed.
He said the “jury is out” on whether the world needs new vaccines to counteract the variants, but that developers are preparing them in case we do.
South African health officials said on Sunday they had stopped the start of a mass deployment of the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine to collect data on hospitalization rates and see the vaccine’s effectiveness in preventing serious illness in people infected with the South African variant.
Pollard said the South African government has “correctly” rethought how it will deploy the vaccine after initially targeting it to health workers.
He also stressed that the South African study was a small study that examined young adults who have only mild infections.
What we expected in this environment was that the virus could still cause very mild infections and that is exactly what we saw in this study, ”Pollard said.
“We are the only people so far who have a study that analyzes this variant in a young population and tells us about the future of this virus, which will find ways to transmit and cause mild infections, colds, etc. to the population, ”Pollard said.
“The really important question is about the serious infection and we didn’t study it in South Africa because it wasn’t the point of the study,” he added, noting that “we were asking specific questions about young adults.”
Commenting on the scrutiny of the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine, Pollard said that “it is a bit disconcerting to find ourselves in the middle of the political debate … we have made a great effort here at Oxford University to be transparent in everything we do that “.