The UK coronavirus variant “is on course to sweep the world,” says the geneticist

LONDON – A variant of the coronavirus that first emerged in the UK and has been identified in more than 50 countries could become the dominant form of the virus worldwide, according to the head of the genetic surveillance program of the United Kingdom.

“The new variant has devastated the country and is likely to devastate the world,” said Professor Sharon Peacock, director of the Covid-19 Genomics UK Consortium.

“In the future, I think the key will be if something (a variant) is especially problematic with vaccines,” he told the station’s Newcast podcast.

The group led by Peacock was set up in April 2020 and brings together highly respected experts and institutes to collect, sequence and analyze the genomes of the virus, as part of the response to the UK pandemic. To date, it has tracked the genetic history of more than 250,000 virus samples.

The consortium first detected the most infectious variant of the virus, dubbed the “British variant” and formally known as “B1.1.7” in Kent, south-east England, in September 2020 using a retrospective analysis. of virus samples.

Viruses mutate all the time, but experts worry when a virus mutates to become more transmissible, as in this case, or more deadly. Higher infection rates associated with the variant identified in the UK are likely to result in more hospitalizations and, unfortunately, more deaths; as a result, containing it has become a priority.

The variant quickly spread to the south-east of England and London and has now become the dominant strain in the UK. It has also been detected in more than 50 countries, with health authorities working to isolate cases, although it is believed that this more virulent strain is already widely circulating.

It is difficult to know the exact origin of the mutation and, given the work of the consortium, they are likely to find new variants in the UK (other countries with advanced genome sequencing of the virus, such as Denmark and South Africa, have also discovered variants). Peacock, who is also a professor of public health and microbiology at Cambridge University, said she believed sequencing of coronavirus variants would be necessary for at least 10 years.

To date, there have been more than 107 million cases of coronavirus and more than 2.3 million deaths worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Aside from the virus variant first seen in the south-east of England, two new variants have appeared in a cluster of cases in the cities of Liverpool and Bristol, which scientists are now monitoring.

The Bristol variant has been designated as a “variant of concern” by the British advisory group for new and emerging respiratory virus threats.

Peacock said that while the mutant variants were a concern, the variant seen in and around Bristol was in “contained areas and in a very low number,” with only 21 cases detected so far.

“It is inevitable that the virus will continue to mutate, but what is worrying is that the B1.1.7 variant that we have been circulating for a few weeks and months will start mutating again and have new mutations, which could affect the way we control the virus in in terms of immunity and vaccine efficacy, ”he added.