Source: https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/23/healt...-19/index.html
Genetics experts worry coronavirus vaccines might not work quite as well against UK variant
By Elizabeth Cohen, CNN Senior Medical Correspondent
Updated 6:14 PM ET, Wed December 23, 2020
(CNN)Michael Worobey, a biologist at the University of Arizona, has seen more than 100,000 different strains of the virus that causes Covid-19. But when he saw the new variant from the UK, he noticed something different.
"This is the first variant I've seen during the whole pandemic where I took a step back and said: 'Whoa,' " he remembers.
Health officials have downplayed the possibility that the coronavirus vaccines won't work against the UK strain, but Worobey and other scientists thinks it's a possibility -- and it's just a possibility -- that this new variant might, to a small extent, outsmart the vaccines.
"This is the first variant I've seen where I think there is this burning question," said Worobey, head of the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona...
Genetics experts worry coronavirus vaccines might not work quite as well against UK variant
By Elizabeth Cohen, CNN Senior Medical Correspondent
Updated 6:14 PM ET, Wed December 23, 2020
(CNN)Michael Worobey, a biologist at the University of Arizona, has seen more than 100,000 different strains of the virus that causes Covid-19. But when he saw the new variant from the UK, he noticed something different.
"This is the first variant I've seen during the whole pandemic where I took a step back and said: 'Whoa,' " he remembers.
Health officials have downplayed the possibility that the coronavirus vaccines won't work against the UK strain, but Worobey and other scientists thinks it's a possibility -- and it's just a possibility -- that this new variant might, to a small extent, outsmart the vaccines.
"This is the first variant I've seen where I think there is this burning question," said Worobey, head of the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona...
Comment