Photographer: Betty Laura Zapata / Bloomberg
Photographer: Betty Laura Zapata / Bloomberg
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British health officials have raised the alarm about a variant of the coronavirus that is spreading rapidly across London and South East England.
The Covid-19 variant has nearly two dozen mutations that can affect proteins made by the coronavirus, Patrick Vallance, the UK’s chief scientific adviser, said Saturday. It is quickly becoming the dominant species in the capital and the Southeast, he said.
Scientists have found mutations in parts of the genome “that are known to be related to how the virus binds to and enters cells,” Vallance said in a news conference with Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The changes “raise concerns about what the virus looks like”.
Johnson said there is no evidence that the variant is more deadly or causes more serious disease than the earlier strains, nor is there any evidence that it will be less susceptible to Covid-19 vaccines being rolled out, although the data is still under review. .
Still, it appears to be as much as 70% more transmissible, and could increase the R-value, the number of people infected with the virus by a person, by 0.4, Johnson said.
Curb transmission
Viruses are typically genetically unstable and their constant mutations allow them to infect new organisms, as the coronavirus did last year when it likely jumped from animals to humans. Scientists were concerned that the increasing spread of the pathogen, which has already infected more than 75 million people worldwide, could give it the chance to transition to a more deadly form.
“We need to reduce transmission to prevent hospitalizations and deaths,” Jeremy Farrar, infectious disease specialist and director of Wellcome, the UK’s research foundation, said on Twitter. “We also need to reduce transmission to reduce the chances of the virus developing and escaping control.”
Changes in viruses have the potential to go in different directions, curb transmission and virulence, but also potentially go in a more serious direction, he wrote. It’s too early to know if things will get more dangerous, he added. While many aspects of the pandemic have been predictable since the start of the year, “we may be entering a less predictable phase.”
Johnson kicked off a new round of restrictions on Saturday when the UK reported 27,052 new cases, bringing the total to more than 2 million. The country reached 1 million cases on October 31.
The prime minister imposed a lockdown on London and large parts of South East England. He canceled plans to ease pandemic restrictions for five days over the holiday season, banning household mixing in London and the South East, while restricting Christmas Day only in the rest of England.
Mink Farms
SARS-CoV-2 generally mutates at a slower rate than some other viruses because it has a self-correcting mechanism that keeps the genetic sequence relatively stable. But other variants of the coronavirus have also been found, including one in mink, susceptible to the virus, which was feared to be highly transmissible and reported to the World Health Organization.
Millions of farmed minks have been culled, although as of November 20, the WHO has said the most troubling species associated with the 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 form of avian flu that killed or led to millions of birds worldwide, and which was very dangerous to the few people who became infected. The flu virus eventually disappeared without being able to spread easily from one person to another.
The coronavirus is already very contagious. In the absence of virus control measures, each infected person regularly infects others. It can spread from the nose and mouth of infected people in droplets and small particles called aerosols.
Very contagious
Under certain circumstances, such as those in meat packers, the virus has been known to spread among workers more than 20 feet apart. Another danger is that the virus will spread from people who are not showing symptoms and are not even aware that they are infected.
If mutations made the virus more deadly, it could be even more of a concern. To date, more than 1.6 million people have died worldwide, and the elderly and those with chronic medical conditions are most at risk of severe symptoms and death.
Yet another concern is that mutation could lead to a virus capable of evading the immune response triggered by vaccines now being rolled out.
“There are theoretical reasons to suspect that some changes could alter the immune response, but there is nothing to suggest that this is the case,” Vallance said.