John Bell, regius professor of medicine at Oxford University, which co-developed an adenovirus vaccine with AstraZeneca, said the company has already developed a vaccine that targets the Beta coronavirus strain, which was also first identified in South Africa and known as B.1.351.

This strain dodged much of the protection offered by the original Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine — to the extent that South Africa called off its immunization campaign with the jab, switching to vaccines from Johnson & Johnson and BioNTech/Pfizer.

Bell told Times Radio that Beta “is the closest strain” to the one now rapidly spreading in South Africa, “so it’ll be interesting to see how that performs” against Omicron. Scientists have been working on it for six months and will finish their immunogenicity studies — needed by regulators to assess whether to approve it — next week.

If Oxford and AstraZeneca need to start from scratch to develop a new vaccine against Omicron, “it’ll probably take a little bit longer than the mRNA vaccines,” he said, estimating this would take four to six months.