Vaccine-beating variant is ‘realistic possibility’, say scientists, amid calls for contingency plans to be revealed
Ministers are being pressed to reveal what contingency plans are in place to deal with a future Covid variant that evades current vaccines, amid warnings from scientific advisers that such an outcome could set the battle against the pandemic back a year or more.
Recent papers produced by the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) have suggested that the arrival of a variant that evades vaccines is a “realistic possibility”. Sage backed continued work on new vaccines that reduce infection and transmission more than current jabs, the creation of more vaccine-production facilities in the UK and lab-based studies to predict evolution of variants.