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Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots for Spectators' Daily Politics Podcast.

I'm Katie Balls and I'm joined by Kate Andrews and James

Forsyfe. We've had a lot about the South African variant, but today we've heard some positive

news in the sense that a trial has found the Pfizer vaccine is 100% effective against the South

African variant. James, do you think this is going to change the government's attitude towards

variants? Because up until now, when we're talking is going to change the government's attitude towards variants?

Because up until now, when we're talking about easing things, there's a big component,

which is the fact they worry about virus evading variants.

I don't think it will radically change the government's attitude towards variants.

First of all, our vaccine programme so far is fairly evenly split between Pfizer and AstraZeneca.

And the AstraZeneca vaccine, the studies suggest, is less effective against South African variant

in stopping people from getting mildly ill.

The scientists involved in devising the Oxford vaccine are pretty confident that it would prevent you from getting seriously ill.

But you need to find more evidence on that I also think the government's big concern is not any of the known mutations

that are out there right now but that one might come along that does evade the vaccine.

And I think that is the concern.

Now, I can see, I can hear listeners saying, you know, you can't base your entire policy around a hypothetical situation.

But I mean that they would think that the fact that the Oxford vaccine is less effective

...