The UK imposed stricter restrictions during the holiday season and officials said a new, more infectious strain of coronavirus was spreading rapidly to the south-east of England.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the new strain was up to 70% more communicable than other variants, accounting for more than 62% of COVID-19 infections in London.
So what do we know about this new strain that is making British officials take more drastic measures to limit the spread of COVID-19?
When did officials first report the new strain of the coronavirus?
UK Health Minister Matt Hancock first announced a new variant of coronavirus (a mutated version of the virus) in London and the south-east of England on 14 December in the House of Commons .
“Initial analysis suggests that this variant is growing faster than existing variants,” warned Hancock, who said he could be responsible for the rapid rise in cases in the south-east of England, which officials would confirm more forward during the week.
Hancock said more than 1,000 cases had been identified in 60 different local areas.
Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO technical director of COVID-19, said on Monday that “so far we have no evidence that this variant behaves differently,” but British officials said on Saturday that it was more transmissible, a reflection in part of how quickly scientists learn about the virus.
“We are aware of this genetic variant reported in 1,000 individuals in England,” said Dr Mike Ryan, director of the WHO emergency program. “This particular variant seems to have become more common in the UK,” he added on Monday.
“Such evolution or mutations like this are really quite common,” said Dr. Ryan, who added that there were several questions about significant variants. He said UK officials were very transparent and had already shared the genome sequence of the variant.
“This is a variant, the N501Y, which is really already being monitored by our working group on the evolution of the virus. It has appeared in the context of a mink variant identified elsewhere,” Van Kerkhove said Monday.
This N501Y is just one of the changes in this variant of the UK, according to a study on the genome of the variant published on Saturday.
Hancock said they do not believe this coronavirus strain does not respond to a vaccine.
What are the changes in this coronavirus strain?
The UK’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, said on Saturday that the new variant has 23 changes, “many of them associated with changes in the protein the virus produces”.
“It’s an unusually large number of variants. It also has variants in areas of the virus that are known to be associated with how the virus binds to cells and enters cells,” Vallance said. . “So there are some changes that cause concern in terms of what the virus looks like.”
He said studies and analysis had shown that the strain was more transmissible, meaning it spread more quickly.
This variant first appeared in September and in November was responsible for 28% of COVID-19 cases in London. In the week of Dec. 9, more than 62 percent of COVID-19 cases in London came from this new variant, officials said.
“So what it tells us is that this new variant is not only moving fast, but increasing in terms of transmission capacity, but it is becoming the dominant variant. It is outperforming the others in terms of transmission,” he said. said Vallance.
Officials said that due to its higher transmissibility, the variant would cause an increase in the country’s reproduction number, the R number, which is the average number of secondary infections of a single infected person.
That number is currently between 1.1 and 1.2 in England, which means that “on average, every 10 infected people will infect between 11 and 12 more people,” says the UK government.
That number could rise 0.4 because of the new variant, officials said Saturday, meaning the epidemic would spread much faster. Any R number greater than one means the epidemic is growing.
Does this new variant cause more serious illnesses?
UK officials say they do not think the new variant will cause more serious or more deadly diseases, but that it will spread more quickly, which could cause major problems for the number of infections.
“There is no current evidence to indicate that the new strain causes a higher mortality rate or affects vaccines and treatments, although urgent work is being done to confirm this,” said Professor Chris Whitty, head English doctor, in a statement issued on Saturday.
Vallance added on Saturday that there was no evidence that this variant caused more hospitalizations, but that for now it is about transmission.
“This virus spreads more easily and therefore more measures are needed to keep it under control,” he added.