This isn't concrete good news but encouraging that variants don't necessarily mean that vaccination programmes have to be repeated or that boosters will even be required. Remains to be seen, of course. Seen on the Guardian live feed.
'New coronavirus vaccines may not be needed if the current jabs keep people out of hospital, the head of the Oxford University vaccine group has told MPs. As PA Media reports, Prof Andrew Pollard told the all-party parliamentary group on coronavirus the jury was still out on whether new vaccines would be necessary but said scientists and pharmaceutical firms were working to get them ready anyway. Pollard said:
"As we move to a point where more people are immunised around the world, or have natural infection, the virus will only survive if it is able to make new versions of itself that can still spread ... despite that immunity. I think we have to come to terms with the fact that that is going to be the future.
Our question at this moment is are we going to need new vaccines? Not to prevent that spread ... but to stop people going into hospital?
At this point, the jury is out on that. All of the vaccines in the trials in those regions where new variants are emerging - we are not seeing a sudden shift where lots of people who are vaccinated are ending up in hospital.
They are still being protected from hospitalisation. We need more data to be secure on this ... but if that’s the case, we might need boosters, we might need tweaks every year, but actually we might not.
We might be generating enough immunity with the current generation of vaccines to stop severe disease."