Hope Consortium: UK looks to inactivated Valneva vaccine to tackle Covid-19 variants

British vaccine minister Nadhim Zahawi tells Abu Dhabi event about potential booster shot roll-out this autumn

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks to Dipesh Sonal as he visits the quality control laboratory where batches of the Oxford/Astrazeneca Covid-19 vaccine are tested at Oxford Biomedica. Getty Images

Technicians work at Oxford BioMedica. AFP

Boris Johnson at a viewing window during a tour of the manufacturing facility. AP Photo

Boris Johnson looks at a petri dish in the quality control laboratory. AP Photo

Boris Johnson, left, walks with Simon Simpkins, head of manufacturing, during a tour of the manufacturing facility. AP Photo

Boris Johnson speaks to Dipesh Sonar and Nisha Gill as he visits the quality control laboratory. Getty Images

Boris Johnson talks with with Laurence Wilkinson, warehouse supervisor as he visits Oxford Biomedica. Getty Images

Boris Johnson looks at a vaccine sample through a microscope. Getty Images

The UK could pin its hopes on a new inactivated vaccine to help guard against variants of the coronavirus.

Nadhim Zahawi, the UK’s vaccine minister, said Valneva's shot could provide more varied protection against new strains.

French drug maker Valneva has the vaccine in development at its lab in Scotland. It expects results from its Phase I and II trials within weeks.

Speaking at the World Immunisation & Logistics Summit, a virtual event organised by the Hope Consortium in Abu Dhabi, Mr Zahawi said the country was working on “future proofing” its successful vaccination campaign, which has seen more than 30 million people receive their first shot.

Two vaccines will be important in what happens next, he said.

“We have announced a very important collaboration with CureVac, which is another messenger RNA technology company that will be manufactured in the UK at scale,” he said.

“And then we have the Valneva vaccine, which is from a French company and [is] being manufactured in Scotland for the end of the year, which will probably form our annual vaccination programme.

“It’s a whole inactivated virus vaccine, which the scientists have great hope for in terms of dealing with any variants.

“So we are looking to future-proof our vaccination programme against any virus variants that may emerge and share it with the world. So we have put 548 million through Covax,” he added.

Mr Zahawi said his government was working with drug makers "on the possibility of an autumn jab, a booster jab. Certainly for the most vulnerable communities. And then probably an annual vaccination".

Vaccine 'suitable for children'

The British government has already pre-purchased 60 million doses from Valneva for this year alone.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited the company's lab in Livingston, Scotland, when commercial production began last month.

It is produced using a dead version of the virus, like Sinopharm, the most widely available vaccine in the UAE.

The vaccine is unlikely to be approved until the end of 2021, but it is seen as an ideal annual booster shot.

Valvena has suggested it may be suitable for children.

Some experts believe inactivated vaccines may be more effective against new mutations because they are made using the whole virus, offering protection against multiple areas.

The majority of the current crop of vaccines are designed to generate antibodies against the spike only, which the Sars-CoV-2 virus uses to enter cells.

Many of the most concerning mutations to have emerged in the virus in recent months have appeared in the spike, which has rendered the vaccines less effective.

Initial tests using antibodies produced by the Pfizer vaccine showed the South African variant did not substantially affect its efficacy.

But a more recent study predicted greater problems, finding the strain was "markedly more resistant" to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, with a 10 to 12-fold reduction in neutralising antibodies.

By contrast, tests using antibodies generated against the Sinopharm vaccine showed they were still able to neutralise the variant, although the effect was slightly weaker than against the original virus.

The reduction in antibodies using the blood of someone vaccinated with the Sinopharm shot were around 1.6 fold less effective against the South African variant, according to the early research. The neutralisation of the virus was "largely preserved," it said.

The UK is currently using Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine; the latter was found to offer just 10 per cent protection against developing mild to moderate symptoms from the South African variant.