Covid-19: Vaccine

Baroness Masham of Ilton Excerpts

Tuesday 12th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

The CMO has made it clear that he leans heavily towards having consistent vaccines, but it is not a requirement. Some of the immune response comes from antibodies which can be tested, but some of it is from T-cells, which are very difficult to test for. It is not possible to categorically say whether someone is immune. However, we have looked at ways to measure and understand more about the body’s immune response to develop our understanding in this area.

[Baroness Masham of Ilton (CB) [V]]

My Lords, what is the chance that, if the second Pfizer vaccine dose is delayed, the virus could become resistant to the vaccine? For what reason do Pfizer and the World Health Organization recommend three weeks between the vaccines?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

The noble Baroness is right; this virus could mutate and start escaping the vaccine. That is a very real threat. The good news is that we know so much about it now, have digitally mapped it and have grown it so many times in the laboratory, that making new vaccines would be a relatively straight- forward process. It would not necessarily require the months of clinical trials that the first one did. However, be under no illusion, were this to happen it would set our vaccine deployment back considerably.