As new variants of the novel coronavirus, known to cause the COVID-19 pandemic, continue to emerge, several questions have been raised around whether the currently available vaccines will be effective against them, stated the chief of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

He was speaking a day after South Africa temporarily halted the rollout of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine following results from a small study showing that the vaccine provided diminished protection against the variant first detected in the country. He described the news as “concerning” and added that the results must prompt us to do everything possible in order to decrease the spread of the virus using the known public health measures… (UN, February 8, 2021)