देश

COVID-19: No evidence that current vaccines will fail to protect against new UK variant, says govt

Hours after the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) announced that six United Kingdom returnees have been tested positive with new UK SARS-CoV-2 virus variant genome, the Centre on Tuesday (December 29, 2020) said that there is no evidence that current coronavirus vaccines will fail to protect against new virus variants.

“There is no evidence that current vaccines will fail to protect against COVID-19 variants reported from the United Kingdom or South Africa. Vaccines will work against the reported new variants of SARS-CoV-2,” said K Vijay Raghavan, Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India.

Niti Aayog’s VK Paul also addressed the press conference and said, “The major population is still susceptible to COVID-19 infection in this cold weather. The UK variant has travelled to several other countries and also to India. This variant may have its own run and we’ve to very careful. One can’t be careless.”

Earlier in the day, the MoHFW said that a total of 6 samples of six UK returnees have been found to be positive with the new UK variant genome.

“3 in NIMHANS, Bengaluru, 2 in CCMB, Hyderabad and 1 in NIV, Pune,” they stated.