What do the new coronavirus variants mean for COVID-19 vaccines?

The emergence of several new coronavirus variants has triggered a fresh wave of concerns over how quickly the virus is changing and new questions about whether COVID-19 vaccines will be able to keep up.

Described by the World Health Organisation as “variants of concern”, the new forms of SARS-CoV-2 — the virus that causes COVID-19 — were first discovered in the UK, South Africa and Brazil in recent months.

While the coronavirus was always expected to evolve — it’s what viruses do — experts didn’t expect it would acquire mutations that might impact the effectiveness of vaccines so soon.

So just how worried should we be about these variants, and what risk do they pose to our efforts to contain COVID-19?

What are variants?

You’ve…