An incoming new variant of Covid-19 has experts concerned that vaccine production isn’t meeting the speed of the virus’ mutation.
Scientists are unsure how effective existing vaccines will be against a new variant of Covid-19 which has “lots of troubling mutations” and, genetically, is the most distant to the original strain.
The C. 1.2 variant, which was first detected in South Africa in May, could easily put existing coronavirus vaccines to shame if it becomes “the next big thing”, according to Harvard epidemiologist Dr Eric Liang Feigl-Ding.
“It’s got lots of troubling mutations and it’s the most mutative of all variants,” Dr Feigl-Ding told Today on Wednesday.
He said early indications didn’t necessarily suggest C. 1.2 would be more dangerous than existing strains, however it was deeply concerning how quickly it had mutated.
“It’s the fact that the virus is mutating so much faster than we expected,” he said.
“That means that for future variants, the…