Coronavirus: Vaccination

(asked on 13th April 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether certain variants of covid-19 are less susceptible to vaccines.


Answered by
Nadhim Zahawi Portrait
Nadhim Zahawi
This question was answered on 20th April 2021

All currently deployed COVID-19 vaccines in the United Kingdom are effective against the prevalent strains in the country.

Public Health England has published early estimates of vaccine effectiveness which includes the United Kingdom variant of concern VOC202012/01 and has shown no substantial change in vaccine effectiveness against this variant, which is now the dominant strain of COVID-19 in the UK. If other emerging variants do reduce vaccine efficacy, it would still be anticipated that the vaccines currently in deployment would continue to provide protection to some extent.

The Government are already taking several steps to understand the efficacy of the current UK vaccine portfolio against new and emerging virus variants. This includes a partnership with CureVac to develop a variation of an existing vaccine tailored to the most appropriate variant target.

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