Will COVID-19 vaccines work on new coronavirus variant? Here’s what US health experts say

London: Will the COVID-19 vaccines being developed across the world with unprecedented space work on the new coronavirus variant? Health experts believe so, but they're working to confirm that.

A coronavirus variant in the United Kingdom has caused alarm because of the possibility that it might spread more easily. But even if that turns out to be true, experts say the COVID-19 vaccines being rolled out will likely still work on the variant.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top US Infectious disease expert, said data coming from Britain indicate the vaccines still will block the virus. But the United States will conduct more tests to be sure, he added.

Viruses often undergo small changes as they reproduce and move through a population. In fact, the slight modifications are how scientists track the spread of a virus from one place to another.

But if a virus mutates significantly enough, one worry is that current vaccines might no longer offer as much protection. And although that's a possibility to watch for overtime with the coronavirus, experts say they don't believe it will be the case with the variant in the United Kingdom.

“My expectation is, this will not be a problem,” said Moncef Slaoui, the chief science adviser for the US Governments COVID-19 vaccine push. 

Meanwhile, the government of India has said that there is no evidence yet to suggest that current vaccines will fail to protect against new UK variant. "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.

The government said this 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.

According to scientists, the new variant of the virus is 70% more transmissible and it was first detected in the UK in September. The UK reported the existence of a new variant of the coronavirus back in September. A few days ago, UK Health Minister, Matt Hancock, said the new variant was “getting out of control,” prompting the government to put millions of people under stricter lockdown measures for Christmas and New Year's eve.

It is important to note that the presence of the new UK Variant has already been reported by Denmark, Netherlands, Australia, Italy, Sweden, France, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, Japan, Lebanon and Singapore, so far.

The discovery of a new COVID-19 strain in the United Kingdom has led to fear and panic across the globe with many countries taking strict measures to stop the spread of the new strain of coronavirus.