James Gallagher
Health and science correspondent, BBC News
New variant ‘almost certainly’ in majority of Europe
The new variant of coronavirus is almost certainly in the majority of European countries already, according to Prof Neil Ferguson, from Imperial College London.
He was giving evidence to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee alongside other experts from the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group, which advises government.
The variant has already been detected in other countries such as Denmark, but is likely to have spread much wider.
Prof Ferguson said: “I’m almost certain in my view, that this virus has been introduced into the great majority if not all European countries at this time.”
The UK has sequenced 45% of all the genetic codes of coronavirus in the world and it is still not certain whether it originated in the south east of England or was just first detected there.
This has raised concerns the UK is being punished for discovering the variant.
At the same hearing, Prof Peter Horby, from the University of Oxford, said: "I think it’s fair to say countries that have more extensive and rigorous science and are more transparent do expose themselves to important information being made available to others.”
Selection pressure plus
Lots of opportunities for mutation=
More transmission
Probably not at proof level yet but the preponderance of evidence sure points that way.
Not surprising. Its why depressing case numbers is so important. Followed by eradication or at least severely reducing case numbers such that contact tracing works well for isolation and ring inoculation.
Some Americans working in healthcare are beginning to receive their shots, but widespread vaccination will take time, and kids will be later. It’s believed that we need 70 percent or 80 percent of people vaccinated to achieve some kind of herd immunity that can slow the spread of the disease, and that definitely won’t be reached in January or February. So we need to be patient, wear masks, keep our precautions up for a little while longer.
Just monstrous!
EDIT: Oops, that was a link to a Templeton-supported researcher winning the 2020 Chemistry Nobel. Link to the herd-immunity/COVID denial/OFB stuff is here.
We’re awaiting other countries to perform their own sequencing data and leaving them to make their own announcements.
He was giving evidence to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee alongside other experts from the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group, which advises government.
UK has 800 untested truckdrivers crossing it’s border with mainland Europe every 24hrs. Also a fair bit of passenger traffic. New variant sequenced back as early as 2x September so, IMO it would be a small miracle if it weren’t already ‘all over’ mainland Europe. Italy - confirmed. France came out a few days ago and confirmed they detected the South African strain.
Just a view, not a troll. I am interested to know when US will confirm one way or the other, that is all.
UK have sequenced two of the changes back to Brazil and USA as far back as june or july, but not all the mutations present.
The language is all couched in mights and maybe’s - certainly they don’t provide evidence that it’s even more transmissible than the new UK strain. Does appear to have more mutations within the spike protein though.
Here, we describe a new SARS-CoV-2 lineage (501Y.V2) characterised by eight lineage-defining mutations in the spike protein, including three at important residues in the receptor-binding domain (K417N, E484K and N501Y) that may have functional significance. This lineage emerged in South Africa after the first epidemic wave in a severely affected metropolitan area, Nelson Mandela Bay, located on the coast of the Eastern Cape Province. This lineage spread rapidly, becoming within weeks the dominant lineage in the Eastern Cape and Western Cape Provinces. Whilst the full significance of the mutations is yet to be determined, the genomic data, showing the rapid displacement of other lineages, suggest that this lineage may be associated with increased transmissibility.
Edit: oops, you were questioning the other Churchill post
Yeah, I don’t doubt the existence of the South African variant, and it looks like they actually did the sequencing to confirm the strain in these two cases. The thing about the UK strain being in the EU is somewhere between wishcasting and considered estimation, but there doesn’t appear to be any actual evidence behind it.
There is some irony in the UK whining about unfair travel restrictions being put on them because of their strain but then slapping their own travel restrictions on South Africa.
Also, hospitalizations shouldn’t be a 7DMA, but a snapshot (I think bobman pointed this out first). There’s a literal number of people in the hospital. You don’t need to account for noise in the weekly reporting cycles, and 7DMA makes an inflection point much less pronounced.
Here’s the change in hospitalized population from the previous week:
Definitely well past an inflection point, but our peak is probably still a week or two out. Heavily California-dependent.
Sadly, I have a new person closest to me who has passed from COVID–a longtime business associate in California. He was recovering from COVID, late-60s guy, when he suddenly had a heart attack. I consider this COVID whether it’s an official statistic or not. He was supposed to retire this week. Truly awful.
After several months, good evidence it has spread widely in the UK and an open, well traveled border, the default assumption is that it’s in the EU, isn’t it? In any case we know it is.
The ECDC said a few cases with the new variant have been detected in Iceland, Denmark and the Netherlands. The agency also cited media reports confirming cases in Belgium and Italy.
The head of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Germany’s disease control authority, said on Tuesday he assumes the new variant has already reached Germany from Britain.
Yeah, I reckon it’s considered estimation. From the interview he gave Ferguson seems to be extrapolating from the fact Denmark unearthed 10 cases of the UK strain. He does caveat with an “in my view” but his argument is basically that given Denmark has relatively few cases and given the UK has far greater traffic with other European regions it’s a virtual certainty that if the variant is there it must be all over.
I’ve been working in a school for the last 2 months, just flew Internationally and I’m clean. If you’ve been taking precautions around people and working alone most of the time, it shouldn’t be a problem.
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Isn’t the thing with pandemic that the faster viruses spread, the less fatal they tend to be? If covid was that fatal, people wouldn’t have the ability to walk around and contact so many people. They’d be too sick to get around and interact with others.
The only government whining with ‘travel restrictions’ is centered around truck drivers being allowed to cross channel so we, as an island nation can still import food. The army will provide now provide daily tests at Dover. I’m sure the moaning will stop when the rest of europe finishes (starts) their genomic surveillance.
This reminds me of February, when the world was with bated breath about whether COVID had spread to x country when, if you look at the fucking Wikipedia of the Wuhan airport it’s blindingly obvious that COVID was at least spread to every single place with nonstop flights from Wuhan, at very least, to include the USA. Yet we spent a month screwing around only testing anyone with direct travel to Asia.
This seems of much less consequence than original COVID (obviously) but it would be nice to stop speculating about where the UK strain has reached. It’s everywhere. We acted much too late on closing borders with the UK, and we don’t have the appetite for a lockdown here to prevent it from spreading domestically. Learning more about transmissibility among children, vaccine efficacy, etc would seem to be the next action.
Random, but re: the new strain, would we need to go thru a complete vaccine approval process to tweak for a new strain? With the flu shot, it seems they manage to update the vaccine for new strains each year without much drama; why wouldn’t this be similar?
I would anticipate that the updates to the mRNA vaccines are much easier than the flu, as with the flu vaccines, you have many more mutations to worry about, and there’s a lot of guesswork about what will or won’t be present and thus what cocktail of antigens to put in the vaccine. With an mRNA vaccine, you literally just put in a chunk of the sequence of the virus, and you’re done. So, easier to design the update, and it should have basically an identical update approval process. The downside is that the mRNA vaccines may be more difficult to manufacture than the flu vaccines, but that should be moot fairly soon.
Hopefully while the vaccination is slowing or temporarily stopping the spread, people can use this time to work on a more effective treatment should there be another outbreak.
In other news, the follow up on people who are supposed to be in quarantine in New York is to send a daily SMS reminding you to stay in quarantine. Just respond with the letter C and that’s that.
Since I got another negative covid test, my quarantine is done. Just gotta get another one before leaving the country and I’m set until I have to get one in the CR before going back to work.
