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UK Chief Scientific Adviser: COVID mutations may evade vaccine, but we can adapt

Britain's Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance speaks during a virtual news conference in London

LONDON (Reuters) - Mutations of the novel coronavirus could theoretically get around the current vaccines, but the vaccines themselves can be adapted to new strains, Britain's Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance said on Friday.

"It's possible that the variants will get round vaccines to some extent in the future," Vallance told a news conference, although he said that was still an unknown.

"But I think the vaccines themselves ... particularly the messenger RNA vaccines are really quite easy to adjust to changes in the virus."

(Reporting by Sarah Young, writing by William James)