A new strain of coronavirus is sweeping across southern England, spurring heightened restrictions in the region and flight bans within Europe and globally. British premier Johnson said that the fast-moving new variant of the virus is 70 percent more transmissible than existing strains.
British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said that the variant was ‘out of control’ and Prime Minister Boris Johnson chaired an emergency meeting Monday as his government tried to manage the fallout.
Let’s take an in-depth review of how the mutations arose, what it means for vaccines, and updating their understanding of the virus.
The new virus mutation
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a variant occurs when the genetic structure of a virus changes. All viruses mutate over time and new variants are common, including for the novel coronavirus.
Virus mutations are not unusual, and scientists have already found thousands of different mutations among coronavirus samples.
The new SARS-CoV-2 variant is being referred to as VUI (Variant Under Investigation) 202012/01, or the B.1.1.7 lineage. The variant is the result of multiple mutations in the spike protein of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, as well as mutations in other genomic regions of the RNA virus.
Is new strain more contagious?
Last month, millions of mink were discovered to be carrying a variant of COVID-19. In October, researchers also found evidence that a coronavirus variant had originated in Spain and spread through Europe. However, neither of the strains were found to increase the spread of the disease.
When the UK’s new strain was first detected last week, health officials were debating whether the rapid spread of the virus was due to widespread carelessness or the contagiousness of the strain itself. After further investigation, scientists found that the new strain is, in fact, significantly more transmissible.
The expert body, however, concluded that there is “currently insufficient data to draw any conclusion” on the underlying mechanism of increased transmissibility”,
Will the mutation be more deadly?
There is no evidence to suggest the same, although this is being monitored. However, just increasing transmission would be enough to cause problems for hospitals. If the new variant means more people are infected more quickly, that would, in turn, lead to more people needing hospital treatment.
Which countries are affected?
The variant has already spread globally. As well as the UK, the variant has also been detected in Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands and Australia, according to the WHO.
Australia has identified two cases of the variant in a quarantined area in Sydney and Italy has also identified one patient infected with the variant. A similar but separate variant has also been identified in South Africa, where scientists say it is spreading quickly along with coastal areas of the country.
Countries Stopping Flights
Pakistan, among several other countries have closed their borders to Britain over fears of a highly infectious new coronavirus strain. The Netherlands and Belgium have imposed a ban on flights. The Dutch government said the ban will last for at least the rest of the year.
France and Ireland will both impose a 48-hour ban on flights arriving from the U.K. India, Italy and Austria also joined the travel ban but the former didn’t specify how long the ban would last. Austria gave no immediate details on the timing of the ban, news agency APA reported.
In a tweet, Germany’s minister of health Jens Spahn said the country is also set to restrict all travel to the U.K. and South Africa because of the new strain.
Will the developed vaccines work against this variant?
There is currently no evidence to suggest that the Pfizer vaccine would not protect people against the new variant. The UK, the US and the EU have authorized the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine and several others are in development.
Meanwhile, the co-founder of BioNTech said it was highly likely that its vaccine against the coronavirus works against the mutated strain detected in Britain, but it could also adapt the vaccine if necessary in six weeks.
“Scientifically, it is highly likely that the immune response by this vaccine also can deal with the new virus variant,” said Ugur Sahin. However, if needed, “in principle the beauty of the messenger technology is that we can directly start to engineer a vaccine which completely mimics this new mutation — we could be able to provide a new vaccine technically within six weeks.”
