Coronavirus: Britain ‘confident’ existing vaccines protect against B1.617.2 variant, health secretary says
- Matt Hancock said the country was ‘in a race between the vaccination programme and the virus’ but officials were assured ‘the vaccine will overcome’
- The variant first identified in India ‘could spread like wildfire’, he said. Case numbers of it in the UK have risen from 520 to 1,313 this week
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Hancock told Sky News the government had a “high degree of confidence” that vaccines would stand up to the B1.617.2 variant, following new early data from Oxford University.
“That means that we can stay on course with our strategy of using the vaccine to deal with the pandemic,” he said.
Britain, one of the countries hit worst by the pandemic with more than 127,000 deaths, has also seen a rapid deployment of vaccines with nearly 20 million people having been fully vaccinated.
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According to government data the case numbers of the B1.617.2 variant have risen from 520 to 1,313 this week.
Hancock said the “vast majority” of people in hospital in Bolton with the new variant had been eligible for vaccination but had not come forward.
He warned because of the high transmission of the B1.617.2 variant it could “spread like wildfire amongst the unvaccinated groups” and because of this the government “need to get as many people vaccinated as possible”.
The health secretary defended the government from criticism that it was too slow to impose travel restrictions on India in the face of the new variant.
He said it was “completely wrong” to suggest the UK could have acted faster to designate India as a “red list” country meaning arriving travellers would have to quarantine in hotels.
We’re in a race between the vaccination programme and the virus, and this new variant has given the virus some extra legs in that race
India was placed under the strict travel restrictions in April before the variant was under investigation, he said.
“We take these decisions based on the evidence,” he said over the visit which was eventually scrapped because of surging Covid-19 cases in India.
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Indoor hospitality and indoor entertainment such as cinemas, museums and sports venues are to open their doors in most parts of the UK for the first time in months on Monday.
People and families will also be able to meet with some restrictions in private houses under the new measures and limited international travel will be permitted.
The government and experts have sounded a note of caution over plans to completely lift restrictions on June 21.
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Hancock said if the B1.617.2 variant was 50 per cent more transmissible than the strain first identified in the English county of Kent that forced the UK into a January lockdown “then we will have a problem”.
“We’re in a race between the vaccination programme and the virus, and this new variant has given the virus some extra legs in that race, but we have a high degree of confidence that the vaccine will overcome,” Hancock said.
