British health experts have advice for the US on how to combat mutant varieties

LONDON – Health experts warn that, even with restrictions, the US will likely struggle to contain the spread of a highly contagious variant of coronavirus, underlining the importance of immediate aggressive action to protect as many people as possible.

The variant, discovered in the UK and known as B.1.1.7., Has an unusually high mutation rate and is associated with more efficient and faster transmission.

There is no evidence that the mutated strain is associated with more severe disease outcomes. However, because it is more transmissible, additional people are more likely to become infected, and this can lead to a greater number of serious cases, hospitalizations, and fatalities.

Scientists first discovered this mutation in September. The alarming variant has since been discovered in at least 44 countries, including the US, which has reported its presence in 12 states.

Last week, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that the modeled trajectory of the variant in the US “shows rapid growth in early 2021 and becomes the predominant variant in March.”

The forecast comes as the UK struggles to control the impact of its exponential growth.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced lockdown measures in England on January 5, instructing people to “stay at home” as most schools, bars and restaurants had to close. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have taken similar measures.

The restrictions, which are expected to remain in effect in England until at least mid-February, were introduced to try to ease the pressure on the country’s already stressed hospitals amid an increase in Covid admissions.

According to government figures released Thursday, Britain registered 37,892 new infections with 1,290 deaths. The day before, the UK recorded a record high of Covid fatalities, when data showed that an additional 1,820 people had died within 28 days of a positive Covid test.

Dr. Deepti Gurdasani, clinical epidemiologist at Queen Mary University of London, stressed that the UK response made it clear that unless aggressive measures were taken immediately, ‘the variant will rapidly spread geographically and its frequency will increase in places where it is established. in the community. “

Gurdasani cited findings from a closely monitored study led by researchers at Imperial College London, which showed ‘no evidence of decline’ in the Covid numbers between January 6 and January 15, despite England being stuck, ‘suggesting it even with limitations is difficult to control effectively because of the higher transferability. “

Researchers of the study, published Thursday, warned that UK health services would remain under “extreme pressure” and that the cumulative number of deaths would rapidly increase unless the prevalence of the virus in the community was significantly reduced.

“All of this means that the containment timeframe is very short. Given the lower active surveillance in the US, the variant may have spread more widely than expected, and policies to contain this should reflect this,” Gurdasani said.

“This means strict containment efforts, not just where the variant was identified, but in all regions where it could have spread. And active surveillance with contact tracking to identify all possible cases, while maintaining strict restrictions to break transmission chains.”

To date, the UK has recorded the fifth highest number of confirmed Covid infections and related deaths in the world.

On his second day in office, President Joe Biden announced sweeping measures to address the virus, including the creation of a Covid testing committee to boost testing, address supply shortages, and provide funds to hard-hit minority communities.

Biden said the executive order showed that “Help is on the way.” He also warned that it would take months to “reverse this”.

“The key to all of this is to reduce interpersonal interactions and the strategy should be broadly the same as what happened before, what has worked elsewhere, and then some,” said Simon Clarke, associate professor of cellular microbiology at the University of Washington. Reading.

Clarke said US states should consider reducing the number of people in retail or leisure settings, and it may be necessary to close bars or limit their hours, given studies showing the risk of indoor transmission is greater.

“None of these things we do to protect ourselves eliminates the risk, none of them make us Covid-proof – all it does is your chances of getting infected,” Clarke said.

“The virus has just pushed that back with this evolutionary step and it will now be even more difficult to achieve the same level of protection.”

“Everyone wants to believe that vaccines are the solution, and they will make a huge difference, but it’s not the whole solution,” said Kit Yates, a senior lecturer in mathematical biology at the University of Bath and author of “The Math of Life and Health. dead. “

Yates said the new US administration should make every effort to roll out Covid vaccines “as soon as possible” to ease the pressure on health facilities, but insisted that this should be part of a multiple approach.

Some other measures that US states should consider, Yates said, include encouraging people to work from home whenever possible, maintain physical distance, improve ventilation within the school, allow children to wear masks, provide financial support to those who isolate themselves and use effective testing and trace protocols.

“These are the boring, horrible, non-pharmaceutical measures that no one wants, but the alternative is just too scary to think about.”