Scientists and health experts in the United Kingdom and the United States state that the new COVID strain is more likely to infect easily than others, however, there is no evidence on it being deadlier.
Viruses naturally evolve as they move through the population, some more than others. It is one reason we need a fresh flu shot each year.
New variants, or strains, of the virus that causes COVID-19 have been seen almost since it was first detected in China nearly a year ago.
Reports of these new coronavirus strains from Britain and South Africa say that these viruses spread easily but experts have no reason to believe that these are more deadly than the previous existing strain and whether or not they pose any concerns for vaccines.
On Saturday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced new restrictions because of the new strain. Several European Union countries and Canada were banning or limiting some flights from the U.K. to try to limit any spread.
Here’s what is known about the situation.
What’s concerning about the recent strain found in England?
Health experts in the U.K. and U.S. said the strain seems to infect more easily than others, but there is no evidence yet it is more deadly.
Patrick Vallance, the British government’s chief scientific adviser, said that the strain “moves fast and is becoming the dominant variant,” causing over 60% of infections in London by December.
The strain is also concerning because it has so many mutations — nearly two dozen — and some are on the spiky protein that the virus uses to attach to and infect cells. That spike is what current vaccines target.
Dr Ravi Gupta, who studies viruses at the University of Cambridge in England said,” I’m worried about this, for sure,” but it’s too soon to know how important it ultimately will prove to be.” He and other researchers posted a report of it on a website scientists use to quickly share developments, but the paper has not been formally reviewed or published in a journal.
How do these new strains occur?
Sometimes viruses can undergo a certain evolutionary process through which they can acquire small changes of a letter or two in their comprising genetic alphabet. A slightly modified strain can become the most common one in a country or region just because that’s the strain that first took hold there or because “super spreader” events helped it become entrenched.
A bigger reason to worry would be when a virus mutates by changing the proteins on its surface to escape from certain drugs or the immune system.
“Emerging evidence” suggests that may be starting to happen with the new coronavirus, Trevor Bedford, a biologist and genetics expert at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, wrote on Twitter. “We’ve now seen the emergence and spread of several variants” that suggests this, and some show resistance to antibody treatments, he noted.
Has any other COVID strain emerged?
In April, researchers in Sweden found a virus with two genetic changes that seemed to make it roughly two times more infectious and about 6,000 cases worldwide have been reported, mostly in Denmark and England.
Several variations of that strain now have turned up. Some were reported in people who got them from mink farms in Denmark. A new South African strain has the two changes seen before, plus some others.
The one in the U.K. has two changes and more, including eight. It’s called a “variant under investigation” because its significance is not yet known. The strain was identified in southeastern England in September and has been circulating in the area ever since, a World Health Organization official told the BBC on Sunday.
Are old strain covid-19 patients likely to be more susceptible to the new strain? Will it undermine vaccines?
President-elect Joe Biden’s Surgeon General Nominee, Vivek Murthy, said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that there’s “no reason to believe that the vaccines that have been developed will not be effective against this virus as well.”
The possibility that new strains will be resistant to existing vaccines is low, but not “inexistent,” Dr Moncef Slaoui, the chief science adviser for the U.S. government’s vaccine distribution effort, said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”