Photographer: Betty Laura Zapata / Bloomberg
Photographer: Betty Laura Zapata / Bloomberg
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Health officials in the UK have sounded the alarm about a variant of the coronavirus that is spreading rapidly in London and the south-east of England.
The Covid-19 variant has nearly two dozen mutations that can affect the proteins produced by the coronavirus, Patrick Vallance, Britain’s chief scientific adviser, said on Saturday. It is fast becoming the dominant strain in the capital and the southeast, he said.
Scientists have discovered mutations in areas of the genome “that are known to be associated with how the virus binds to cells and enters cells,” Vallance said in a news briefing with Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The changes “cause concern about the appearance of the virus”.
Johnson said there is no evidence that the variant is more lethal or causes more severe disease than previous strains, nor is there any indication that it will be less susceptible to Covid-19 vaccines being released, although data are still under review.
However, it appears to be up to 70% more transmissible and could increase the R value, the number of people infected by a person with the virus, by 0.4, Johnson said.
Transmission reduction
Viruses are usually genetically unstable, and their constant mutations give them opportunities to infect new organisms, as the coronavirus did last year, when it probably jumped from animals to humans. Scientists have expressed concern that the growing spread of the pathogen, which has already infected more than 75 million people worldwide, could give it a chance to turn into a more lethal form.
“We need to reduce transmission to prevent hospitalizations and deaths,” Jeremy Farrar, an infectious disease specialist and director of Wellcome, the UK’s research foundation, said on Twitter. “We also need to reduce transmission to reduce the chance that the virus will evolve and get out of control.”
He wrote that changes in viruses have the potential to lead in different directions, limiting transmission and virulence, but also possible to move in a more severe direction. It is too early to know if it becomes more dangerous, he added. Although many aspects of the pandemic have been predictable since the beginning of the year, “we may enter a less predictable phase.”
Johnson launched a new round of restrictions on Saturday as the UK reported 27,052 new cases, bringing the total to over 2 million. The country reached 1 million cases on October 31.
The prime minister imposed a blockade on London and large parts of the south-east of England. He canceled plans to reduce pandemic restrictions for five days during the holidays and banned mixing of households in London and the South East, while limiting socialization to Christmas Day in the rest of England.
Mink farms
SARS-CoV-2 generally moves at a slower rate than other viruses because it has a self-correction mechanism that keeps its genetic sequence relatively stable. But other variants of the coronavirus have been detected, including one in mink, which are susceptible to the virus, which was feared to be highly transmissible and has been reported to the World Health Organization.
Millions of farm mines have been slaughtered, although as of November 20, the WHO has said that the most worrying strain related to animals is no longer circulating in humans.
Viral mutations are sometimes a cause for concern. Nearly 20 years ago, scientists closely followed the mutations in a deadly strain of bird flu that killed or killed millions of birds around the world and was extremely dangerous to a few people who they infected. The flu virus eventually disappeared without gaining the ability to spread easily from person to person.
Coronavirus is already highly contagious. In the absence of virus control measures, each infected person frequently infects others. It can spread from the noses and mouths of infected people into tiny droplets and particles called aerosols.
Very contagious
Under certain conditions, such as those in meat packing plants, the virus is known to spread among workers more than 20 feet apart. Another danger is that the virus spreads to asymptomatic people and they may not realize they are infected.
If the mutations made the virus more lethal, this could create even more concern. To date, more than 1.6 million people worldwide have died, and the elderly and those with chronic conditions have the highest risk of severe symptoms and death.
Another concern is that the mutation could lead to a virus capable of evading the immune response created by vaccines that are now underway.
“There are theoretical reasons to suspect that some of the changes may alter some of the immune response, but nothing has been seen to suggest that is the case,” Vallance said.