Infectious disease experts are positive about authorized vaccines working against the new strain of COVID-19 virus identified in the United Kingdom and South Africa. According to The Washington Post, virologists have said that even if the new variants of COVID-19 evolve enough to beat the authorized vaccines, there should not be a problem because vaccines can be modified within minutes. The new variants of COVID-19 detected in the UK and South Africa have been termed more severe than all previous mutations since the outbreak began in 2019.
Drew Weissman, a professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine and one of the inventors of the messenger RNA technology that has been used by both Pfizer and Moderna for their vaccines, said that it is “very easy” to tweak the drugs to fight new strains of the virus.