The new mutant variant of the “super” coronavirus is, in fact, more infectious than previous variants, as scientists feared, according to a new study.
Researchers at Imperial College London found that the new variant that has been wreaking havoc in the UK may be almost 50 per cent more transmissible, based on samples from almost 86,000 Britons.
In the study published online yesterday, which has not yet been reviewed, researchers at Imperial College determined that the ‘R’ number of the new variant B117 is between 0.4 and 0.7 points higher than the of other variants.
The ‘R’ number of a virus describes the average number of additional cases that each infection causes.
In the UK, the last R number is between 1.1 and 1.3, according to government data. This means that, on average, every 10 infected people will infect between 11 and 13 more people.
The graphs in the new study show how, over the course of eight weeks, the new variant became increasingly common (highest points on each graph) in the UK and became more transmissible (the points to the right of each graph show an increasing R number or transmission rates)
Pictured: a screenshot of the Imperial College report showing case trends related to the new coronavirus strain, where the% S rate indicates the transport of the new variant
Pictured: Imperial College report charts showing the age distribution of people wearing the new Covid-19 variant
Meanwhile, on average in the US, each infected person currently causes 1.15 more infections, according to RT.live’s daily calculations.
With this measure of transmissibility, the R number in the U.S. ranges from 0.86 in Alaska to 1.23 in Maine, which has become an access point this week.
The new variant was first detected in the UK in September, according to the study, but in early December it exploded and caused an increase in infections among Britons.
The spread of the new variant SARS-CoV-2, or Variant of Concern 202012/01 (VOC), in England occurs despite there being a tiered system as part of efforts to control the spread of the virus.
Most of England is below “level 4”, the strictest level, although it is still recording a record number of daily Covid-19 infections despite the measures.
Researchers at Imperial College London sequenced the genomes of 1,904 people infected with the new variant and compared how quickly the virus spread to a wider sample of other specimens taken from more than 48,000 people in England.
As expected, they found that the new virus did indeed have a “selective advantage over SARS-CoV-2 variants circulating in England,” they wrote in the publication published Thursday online.
The variant was also disproportionately common among twenty-year-olds and those living in the south-east and east of England and London.
The results of the new study mean that every person who catches this mutated virus will transmit it to up to 0.7 people more on average.
To date, there is no evidence to indicate that the new variant causes a more serious or more fatal disease.
Encouragingly, virologists and public health experts believe that vaccines developed by companies such as AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Moderna will still be effective against the new variant of the coronavirus.
But the new variant heats up the race between the spread of the virus and vaccination campaigns in the United Kingdom, the United States, where the new variant has now been found in Colorado, California and Florida, and in at least 31 other countries where the form most infectious is coronavirus.
With more than 186,000 people recently infected in a single day on average in the United States, the 48% higher transmissibility rate of 1.85 could cause new infections a day beyond 275,000.
It could mean a disaster for hot spot hospitals like California, where some health systems and regions are no longer available in ICU beds, in states of “internal disaster” and rationing.
There are similar fears in the UK about the National Health Service (NHS) and its ability to cope with the number of coronavirus patients expected as the new variant of the disease continues to spread.
Sharing data from a separate study by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), Deepti Gurdasani, a tenured professor at Queen Mary University of London in Epidemiology and Statistical Genetics. warned that “B117 is dominant or very close to the majority in most regions” in England.
Over the course of six weeks, the researchers saw the transmission rate (R) of the new coronavirus variant increase (orange) than that of other variants, especially in southeast England, East England, and London
Meanwhile, only 3.17 million Americans had been vaccinated as of Friday, according to a Bloomberg News account.
The balance sheet of the CDC makes the number even lower. The agency’s website says the vaccination tracker will be updated every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, but at the time of publication, the tool showed Wednesday’s figures, with 2.79 million people vaccinated.
Bloomberg’s highest estimate means that Operation Warp Speed has vaccinated only 16 percent of the 20 million Americans it promised to inoculate by the end of the year.
At this rate, it would take almost a decade to vaccinate all adult members of the American population of 331 million people.
And many Americans remain on the brink of the vaccine even when one is available. About 60 percent of Ohio nursing home workers said they would refuse a shot.
The slow and dysfunctional distribution of the vaccine and the distrust of Americans in the shots could jointly offer variant B117 the opening it needs to spread like wildfire in the country infecting millions beyond the 20 million people who already they have had the infection in the United States and killed thousands.
