IT will take up to three months to get a new Covid-19 vaccine out to tackle emerging variants, an immunisations expert has warned.

Professor Andrew Pollard, who has been a member of the WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on Immunisation since 2016, outlined future vaccine strategies in a meeting chaired by Oxford West and Abingdon MP Layla Moran.

The all-party group on coronavirus, which works to ensure that lessons are learned from the UK’s handling of the outbreak, held a meeting yesterday and heard from Professor Pollard, who is also director of the Oxford vaccine group, and Professor Deborah Dunn-Walters, chair of the British Society for Immunology and Covid-19 taskforce.

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Professor Pollard confirmed there will be other emerging variants and that there are two main approaches in dealing with them.

One is dealing with the ones 'already known to us', which, he said, is where we are at the moment.

The other is to anticipate in advance how the virus can change – however, Professor Pollard pointed out that 'we are on the edge of that bit of science'.

He said: "We might not be there this year, but I think for future pandemics – if we are thinking in a depressing way – that is how we will much more easily be able to cope with them, particularly with this type of viruses, which can mutate so well.

Professor Andrew J Pollard Photo: Oxford University

"We are not quite there yet but this plan will drive us much closer to where we can be more predictive in the future."

In terms of a specific timeline, Professor Pollard estimated that it would take between two to three months to produce a new vaccine.

He pointed out that the 'jury is still out' on whether we are going to need new vaccines at all but that there will not be 'any difficulties' to do that with all the work that is going on in Oxford/AstraZeneca and Pfizer.

The expert added that small clinical trials of a few hundred people might be needed to prove that the new vaccine construct still makes the same immune response in humans.

Professor Pollard commented: "Where we have got with flu is that we do not need clinical studies anymore because it is so easy to predict what will happen, and I think we can get that with coronaviruses, which would make the process much quicker."

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