A HEALTH expert has reacted to news of a new Covid-19 strain – and the revelation that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is able to resist the Indian variant.

Pfizer/BioNTech – the developers of the first Covid-19 vaccine – announced yesterday that they believe their jab to be as effective against the Indian variant as it is against the South African strain.

Vaccines are also proving to be effective at stopping serious illness in the slim chance that someone catches the virus after receiving their jab.

Health academic Dr John Campbell, of Carlisle, said that is positive news: “People that had no vaccines actually got five symptoms in the first week, people that had the first dose if they got infected, they get two to four symptoms. If they had two doses they had 0-1.”

He called for calm after a variant of Covid was identified in Yorkshire yesterday.

“The UK is actually doing more genomic testing than anyone else in the world," he said. “Because the variant is always mutating, it’s not really surprising that you would get a new variant in an area.”

Dr Campbell said that although it is important to curb the rise in Covid-19 variants with the rollout of vaccines, it is expected that mutations will emerge.

He said that countries like the United States do not reveal variants of the coronavirus “because they haven’t got the level of genomic sequencing that we have in the UK”.

“The thing that would be a concern is if it makes people more sick," Dr Campbell said. “The other reason it would be a concern is if it had a younger demographic.”

To date, young people have been less affected by the Covid-19 infection.

There was more good news about the Pfizer vaccine this week as it was revealed that new storage conditions which extend its shelf life to 31 days (instead of five) have been approved by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.

Dr June Raine, MHRA chief executive, said: “Now that the jab can be stored at normal fridge temperatures for up to 31 days, it can be used in a wider range of healthcare settings, giving patients greater access to the Pfizer vaccine.”