Matt Hancock says he is ‘incredibly worried’ about super-infectious South African coronavirus mutation

Matt Hancock today revealed he is ‘incredibly worried’ about the highly-infectious South African coronavirus mutation which top experts fear could scupper Britain’s vaccine roll-out.

The Health Secretary warned the variant — which has already been identified in the UK — posed a ‘very, very significant problem’.

His comments came after one of the Government’s coronavirus advisers yesterday claimed there was a ‘big question mark’ over whether any of the current wave of jabs could protect against the mutant strain.

Sir John Bell, regius professor of medicine at Oxford University, argued the South African variant was more concerning than the Kent one because it has ‘pretty substantial changes in the structure of the protein’, meaning vaccines could fail to work.

Covid vaccines — including the Pfizer/BioNTech and Oxford University/AstraZeneca jabs currently being rolled out across Britain — work by training the body to spot the virus’s spike protein.

If the spike mutates so much that it becomes unrecognisable then it could render vaccines useless or make them less potent.

However, the current vaccines are believed to be effective against the Kent strain which is causing a massive spike in cases across the UK.
Um??
Me: Pfizer/BioNTech is said to be 95% effective and Oxford University/AstraZeneca is said to be about 60% effective, so which one would you have?