Korean pharmaceutical companies have set about to develop treatments and vaccines that can respond to mutated coronavirus strain, including the variant that recently emerged in the United Kingdom.

Daewoong Pharmaceutical said its Covid-19 therapy, candidate DWRX2003 (ingredient: niclosamide), now being developed jointly with Daewoong Therapeutics, is likely to treat the variant. The company noted that the drug inhibits SKP2 (S-phase kinase-associated protein 2) and decomposes the virus by activating its autophagy.

Genexine is also researching a next-generation vaccine called GX-19N to prevent the variant Covid-19 strain from re-infecting recovered patients.

The recently emerged Covid-19 variant virus, which scientists say is up to 70 percent more infectious than the previous strains reported, transmits to children at the same rate as adults.

According to Reuters' report, scientists from the U.K. government's New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG) said the mutated Covid-19 virus has become the dominant strain in southern Britain and could spread throughout the U.K.

Concerns about the previously developed vaccines are also growing, as the new strain of Covid-19 is sweeping southern England, causing alarm in Europe and forcing governments to issue travel bans from the U.K. to block the variant virus’s inflows.

According to epidemiologists, viruses mutate all the time, and continuous mutations give rise to a variant strain. If the variant virus is resistant to vaccines, then the previously developed medicines can no longer protect the people.

However, experts say that people should not worry excessively about vaccines' effectiveness on mutated coronavirus as the emergence of variant strain had long been expected.

"The variant strain of the coronavirus is unlikely to neutralize the developed vaccines, but we cannot be 100 percent sure of it," said Microbiology Professor Paik Soon-young at the Catholic University of Korea College of Medicine. "Although vaccines can work just fine against the variant Covid-19 virus, a new strain can emerge at any moment. If ‘Covid-20’ breaks out next year, then we may need to get new vaccination."

Moncef Slaoui, head of the U.S. Operation Warp Speed, said in an interview with CNN on Sunday that the new strain of Covid-19 is "very unlikely" to escape currently approved vaccine immunity.

Slaoui added that antibodies produced in response to the Covid-19 vaccines would continue to be effective as they bind to epitopes or other regions of the spike protein.

Jung Eun-kyeong, the commissioner of the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, said Monday that the health authorities are closely watching whether the recent surge of infection was caused in part by the new variant of Covid-19 reported in the U.K.

"There have been about 1,600 cases of Covid-19 virus genetically analyzed in Korea, but we have not seen the variant reported in the U.K. yet," Jung said.