‘No reason to think’ South Africa strain will become dominant in UK, says adviser

LONDON — The coronavirus variant responsible for the vast majority of cases in South Africa does not appear to have any competitive advantage that could make it dominant in the U.K., a leading British government adviser said.

Jonathan Van-Tam, deputy chief medical officer for England, said Monday the “most likely scenario” is that the South African variant will not “overtake” the widespread British variant first identified at the end of 2020 anytime soon.

The number of coronavirus patients with the South African variant in the U.K. remains “small,” he said, adding that people should not currently be “concerned about” such a possibility. The U.K. last week stepped up door-to-door testing in areas facing outbreaks of the strain.

“Early data does not suggest that the South Africa variant has a distinct transmissibility advantage over our current virus and because of that there’s no reason to think the South Africa variant will catch up or overtake our current virus in the next few months,” Van-Tam told a press conference.

Early findings of a study yet to be published suggest two doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab offer only “minimal protection” against mild and moderate COVID-19 caused by the South African variant. South Africa halted plans to roll out the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab for frontline health workers in the wake of the small clinical trial.

Van-Tam said the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab was still “rather likely” to have an effect on “serious disease.”

U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson earlier told reporters that vaccines deployed in Britain remained “effective in delivering a high degree of protection against serious illness and death,” while Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the government had a “plan for what to do if we need to update the vaccines to work on new variants.” He also confirmed around one in four U.K. adults have now received their first vaccine dose.

Van-Tam was also pressed on whether Britons could start booking summer holidays either abroad or within the U.K. “The more elaborate your plans are for summer holidays, in terms of crossing borders, in terms of household mixing, given where we are now, I think we just have to say the more you are stepping into making guesses about the unknown at this point,” he said.