Coronavirus, just like flu, mutates over time, so responding to new variants as soon as they arise is critical to protect ourselves for the long term.
The evidence we have is that the vaccines we have do protect us against severe disease from the so-called South African variant, but that they are less effective at stopping mild or asymptomatic cases from this variant (and thus less effective at slowing its spread).
The UK is leading the world in our ability to recognise new variants through genomic sequencing, and we are bringing in enhanced testing and tracing wherever and whenever we find a new variant of concern.
I was happy to hear from the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care that work is being done to ensure vaccines can be adapted as quickly as possible if and when new strains are identified, without compromising safety.
The Science & Technology Committee, on which I sit, will be looking again at vaccines soon, and I will be pressing the case for us to consider whether the world could adapt faster methods for establishing the effectiveness of vaccines, such as "challenge trials".
Challenge trials are where healthy volunteers have a vaccine (or a placebo) and then are deliberately exposed to the actual virus. Whereas in the current trials, we have had to wait for some of the vaccinated people to have inadvertent exposure to the virus before we could establish a vaccine's effectiveness.
You can watch my contribution here: https://facebook.com/AaronBell4NUL/videos/2860347937555312/