NEW STRAIN
How worried should we really be about mutant Covid strain spreading in South – experts reveal all
A NEW strain of coronavirus could be behind a surge in cases in the South of England, Health Secretary Matt Hancock has claimed.
But experts say it is too early to be worried about the Covid variant - named VUI - 202012/01 - or make any claims about its potential impacts.
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Mr Hancock announced the mutation may be linked to the faster spread of the virus in the South of England in a speech in the Commons yesterday.
He stressed there is no evidence to suggest the variant is more likely to cause serious disease, and that it is highly unlikely the mutation would fail to respond to a Covid-19 vaccine.
Mr Hancock said the new strand of the virus, first observed in Kent, is being assessed by Government scientists at its Porton Down research laboratory.
Scientists suggest that it's unlikely the new strain is more lethal as viruses tend to evolve so they can spread wider rather than becoming deadlier.
Prof Adam Finn, from the University of Bristol as well as the Joint Committee of Vaccination and Immunisation, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “What we tend to see is that viruses do mutate towards being more infectious because that creates an advantage for them.
“But it’s important that people recognise that pathogens tend to evolve away from being virulent.
“There’s not really an expectation that the virus will become more likely to kill you or make you more seriously sick over time.
“In fact, it tends to be an advantage for pathogens to be more benign because if their hosts survive for longer and are infectious for longer that helps them spread about.
“So I think people should modify their alarm because we’re not talking about a strain that appears to be killing people more, it’s just spreading about more.”
Chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty said there was nothing to suggest a vaccine would not work against the new strain and that current tests can detect it.
He told the No10 press briefing: "There's still a quite a small proportion of the population, currently have immunity due to prior infection.
"So there isn't a huge selection pressure on this virus.
"And therefore, it would be surprising - not impossible, but pretty surprising, if this would actually have evolved to be able to get around the virus."
He added that as time goes by selection pressures, when a very high proportion of the population has been vaccinated, mean any new variants that emerge are more likely to be ones which actually are able partially to escape from a vaccine but there's no reason to think that would be happening at the moment.
'NO DIFFERENCE'
Prof Whitty also said there was nothing to indicate the new strain causes any different symptoms, that the testing is different or the clinical outcome is different for this variant.
He continued: "The main reason we are raising this to people's attention is the question about whether this is spreading more quickly. It may be 'cause and effect', or it may not."
Another scientist who advises the Government has also urged people not to lose sleep over the new Covid variant.
Calum Semple, professor of outbreak medicine at the University of Liverpool and a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), said it is normal for viruses to mutate.
He added that it was "the million-dollar question" whether vaccines will be effective against the new variant of coronavirus but he thinks they will.
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Prof Semple told BBC Breakfast: "People should not be losing sleep about this, they really need to leave the virology to the scientists because we're at the very early stages of understanding what's going on here.
"What I can say is that coronavirus, like many other viruses, mutate all the time.
"And without the presence of community immunity - that's because we don't have herd immunity and won't have for many, many months - the virus essentially is free to change and become more comfortable with the humans with which it is living.
"That's what the virus is doing - it is learning how to become slightly better at living with us and becoming slightly more infectious. But that does not mean it's harming us more or causing more severe illness in people."
JAB HOPES
Prof Semple explained that some of the mutations are occurring in what he described as the key that the virus uses to unlock the cells - something which is seen with flu each year, which is why the flu vaccine has to change year on year.
He added: "I would expect the (Covid-19) vaccine still to be reasonably effective because it's currently 95 per cent effective.
"Even if we dropped a few percentage points, it's still going to be good enough, and much better than many other vaccines on the market.
I would expect the (Covid-19) vaccine still to be reasonably effective because it's currently 95 per cent effective
Prof Calum Semple
"And the next bit of good news is that the new vaccines are essentially like emails that we send to the immune system, and they're very easy to tweak.
"So if we know that the lock has changed very slightly, we just have to edit that email, change a word or two and then the vaccine that will be ready in six to eight weeks' time after that, will be competent and better targeted to the new strain.
"So this is not a disaster. This isn't a breakdown in all our plans. This is just what we expect with a new virus, and it's what the scientists and the doctors have come to understand, and we will adapt."
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Alan McNally, professor in microbial evolutionary genomics at the University of Birmingham, said: "Huge efforts are ongoing at characterising the variant and understanding its emergence.
"It is important to keep a calm and rational perspective on the strain as this is normal virus evolution and we expect new variants to come and go and emerge over time.
"It's too early to be worried or not by this new variant, but I am in awe of the surveillance efforts in the UK that allowed this to be picked up so fast."
It is important to keep a calm and rational perspective on the strain as this is normal virus evolution
Prof Alan McNally
Jonathan Ball, professor of molecular virology at the University of Nottingham, said: "The genetic information in many viruses can change very rapidly and sometimes these changes can benefit the virus - by allowing it to transmit more efficiently or to escape from vaccines or treatments - but many changes have no effect at all.
"Even though a new genetic variant of the virus has emerged and is spreading in many parts of the UK and across the world, this can happen purely by chance.
"Therefore, it is important that we study any genetic changes as they occur, to work out if they are affecting how the virus behaves, and until we have done that important work it is premature to make any claims about the potential impacts of virus mutation."
UNDER INVESTIGATION
Public Health England (PHE) said that as of December 13, 1,108 cases with this new variant had been identified, predominantly in the south and east of England.
Scientists will now be growing cultures of the strain in laboratories to see how it responds, to see if it produces the same antibody response to the existing strain, to see how the vaccine might impact it and to get a full picture of what it means.
However, it may take up to two weeks to thoroughly investigate.
While more is unknown about the new strain than is known, the places where it is being seen - the South of England - is where there are high numbers of cases, indicating it might be because the strain is spreading faster.
What is a mutation?
A mutation is a change in the virus’s genome, the set of genetic instructions that have all the information the virus needs to function.
When the virus makes contact with a host and starts to replicate, this set of instructions is copied, but mistakes can happen during this process.
Like all infectious agents Covid-19 mutates as it circulates within the human population, but this is often without any real consequence on the virus.
These mutations can often be linked to the shape of the spike protein of the virus.
The Covid-19 Genomics UK (Cog-UK) Consortium tracks new genetic variants as they spread and investigate if these changes lead to detectable changes in the behaviour of the virus or the severity of Covid-19 infections.
Most mutations that arise and spread have no detectable effect on the biology of the virus.
But a few have the potential to change both the biological behaviour of the virus and persist if they confer an advantage to the virus.
However, this needs to be looked at in more detail.
Experts will also be looking at samples all around the country to see whether the strain has spread, and how quickly.
This is the first time that authorities in England have investigated a coronavirus strain in this way.
A mutation is a change in the virus's genome, the set of genetic instructions that have all the information the virus needs to function.
When the virus makes contact with a host and starts to replicate, this set of instructions is copied, but mistakes can happen during this process.
Like all infectious agents Covid-19 mutates as it circulates within the human population, but this is often without any real consequence on the virus.
These mutations can often be linked to the shape of the spike protein of the virus.
The Covid-19 Genomics UK (Cog-UK) Consortium tracks new genetic variants as they spread and investigate if these changes lead to detectable changes in the behaviour of the virus or the severity of Covid-19 infections.
Most mutations that arise and spread have no detectable effect on the biology of the virus.
But a few have the potential to change both the biological behaviour of the virus and persist if they confer an advantage to the virus.
'NO MORE SEVERE'
Professor Wendy Barclay, head of the department of infectious disease, Imperial College London, said: "SARS-CoV-2 is an RNA virus and mutations are expected to occur as it replicates.
"It is essential that we understand the consequence of any changes in the genome of the virus - for example, how this might impact on disease, transmission and the immune response to the virus.
"Some variants with changes in the spike protein have already been observed as the virus is intensely sequenced here in the UK and around the world.
"There is no evidence that the newly-reported variant results in a more severe disease.
"This variant contains some mutations in spike protein that is the major target of vaccines, and it will be important to establish whether they impact vaccine efficacy by performing experiments in the coming weeks."
Dr Jeremy Farrar, director of Wellcome, said: "The full significance of this is not yet clear - that includes whether a new strain is responsible for the current rise of infections in parts of the UK and, if so, what this may or may not mean for transmission and the efficacy of the first vaccines and treatments."
But Dr Lucy van Dorp, senior research fellow in microbial genomics at the UCL Genetics Institute, said the claims needed the science to back them up.
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She said: "It is frustrating to have claims like this made without the associated evidence presented for scientific assessment and the variant remains to be officially announced.
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"It seems COG-UK will release further details soon and a preprint may follow."
Asked about the variant, Maria Van Kerkhove, Covid-19 technical lead at the World Health Organisation, told a press briefing on Monday: "So far we don't have any evidence that this variant behaves differently. But we will continue to evaluate and inform you of any changes."
New Covid-19 variant may be associated with faster spread of coronavirus in South of England
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