LONDON (Reuters) – A new variant of the coronavirus rapidly spreading in Britain carries mutations that could mean children are just as susceptible to getting infected as adults – unlike previous strains, scientists said Monday.
Briefing reporters on the latest findings, scientists from the Government’s New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG) who are monitoring the variant said it had quickly become the dominant species in southern Britain, and would soon be the same. can do all over the country.
“We are now very confident that this variant has a transmission advantage over other virus variants currently found in the UK,” said Peter Horby, Professor of Emerging Infectious Diseases at the University of Oxford and Chair of NERVTAG.
“There is some evidence that it has a greater propensity to infect children,” said Neil Ferguson, a professor and epidemiologist of infectious diseases at Imperial College London and also a member of NERVTAG.
“We haven’t established a causality about that, but we can see it in the data,” Ferguson said. “We will have to collect more data to see how it behaves in the future.”
The emergence of the mutated SARS-CoV-2 variant, which scientists say is up to 70% more transmissible than previous species in the UK, has led some countries to close their borders with Great Britain and leave large areas of it country into severe restrictions. the Christmas period.
Wendy Barclay, another NERVTAG professor and a specialist in virology at Imperial, said that among the mutations in the new variant are changes in the way it enters human cells, which could mean that “ children may be as susceptible to this virus as adults. ”.
“Therefore, given their mixing patterns, you would expect more children to get infected,” Barclay said.