Baroness McIntosh of Pickering
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Covid-19
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con) [V]
I am sure the department continues to work on these issues. They are very important, but I am afraid I cannot give an update on publication.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con) [V]
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend and the Government on the vaccination programme and for sticking to the advice of the JBC. It is vital for people to have confidence in the integrity of the vaccination programme. Does my noble friend share my concern about the South African mutation? If this was a seasonal variation, it would respond to the heat and climate of South Africa at this time of year, so it is deeply disturbing. What research is going into this variation at this time to ensure that it can be defeated and managed at the earliest opportunity?
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con) [V]
I assure my noble friend that much work is going on in our scientific community to analyse the new variants. As she will know, the UK has one of the most extensive genomic sequencing capabilities in the world. We have offered a new variant assessment platform to work with the WHO to offer our expertise in genomic sequencing to other countries. Indeed, we have sequenced over half of all viral Covid genomes that have been submitted to the global database. I assure her that we are at the forefront of work on these variants.
The one thing that I hope will give her some comfort is that all the current evidence continues to show that both vaccines we are currently using remain effective against both UK and South African variants. Moderna has said that it expects its vaccine to protect against the South African variant as well. It has also said that the reduction in antibody levels suggests that immunity could wane more rapidly, so Moderna is having a further look at its vaccine. That shows how much work is going on, both within the companies developing vaccines and more broadly, to make sure we stay ahead of these new variants.