RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – British Premier Boris Johnson decided on Saturday to tighten circulation restrictions over Christmas in London due to a new coronavirus strain detected in the UK capital and regions in Southern and Southeastern England.
According to the scientific team advising the British government, the new strain has a higher transmission capacity (up to 70% greater than the preceding one), which leads to infections occurring faster, although the data available so far do not allow concluding that the variant produces more severe symptoms of the disease or higher mortality.
According to the British government, up to 62% of new infections registered in the British capital are related to the new variant, which has become the dominant one.
This is not the first new worrying strain of SARS-Cov-2 to be detected. In November, the Danish government ordered millions of mink to be slaughtered after another coronavirus variant was detected, which spread among breeding farms and then passed to humans.
Th UK coronavirus variant contained four new mutations, some of them in the most important part of the pathogen: the S protein, vital for SARS-CoV-2 to infect and which is the target of many vaccines under development. It has not yet been proven that these new strains are more contagious or infectious than those already detected.
“The fact that viruses mutate to become more infectious is not surprising and that this could happen with new and emerging viruses has been known for some time,” said Paul Hunter, professor of the University of East Anglia’s Norwich School of Medicine.
“In my opinion, these reports on the transmissibility of the new variant are even more worrying than I had expected,” he added. The expert believes it is only “a matter of time” for this virus variant to become dominant in the UK and to emerge in other countries.
“The new variant is very worrying and doesn’t look like anything we’ve seen so far in the pandemic. The new restrictions announced today are a fully justified reaction to the rapidly developing situation,” said Jeffrey Barrett, director of the Wellcome Sanger Institute’s Covid Genomics initiative
Viruses are constantly mutating. British government scientists have identified 17 mutations linked to the virus’ genetic code that apparently make this newly discovered strain more infectious. According to researchers, changes in the surface of the virus may allow it to bind to cells more easily.
“However, there is still no evidence that the new virus is more or less dangerous in terms of its ability to cause diseases. Unfortunately, we will need to wait and see if hospitalizations and deaths increase or decrease to find out,” said Simon Clarke, associate professor of cellular microbiology at Reading University.
“This variant has certainly become more prevalent in southeastern England,” said Daniel Altmann, immunologist at Imperial College London. “This situation adds to the urgency of vaccinating everyone as soon as possible,” he noted.
Awaiting further evidence, the scientific team advising the British government continues to trust that the vaccines will be effective against the new virus strain. “This variant contains some worrying mutations that compel us to reduce transmission by enforcing social restrictions,” said Ravindra Gupta, a microbiologist at Cambridge University. “We still need to understand the real impact of these mutations on the virus’ behavior,” he added.
It is worth bearing in mind that the new strains’ real impact is still unknown. “Only half of the 17 mutations detected are found in the S protein [that the virus uses to penetrate human cells],” explains Fernando González Candelas, a researcher at the Valencian Fisabio Foundation. “In any case, it seems serious enough to observe it thoroughly and urgently,” he adds.
A mutation is like a printing error in the virus’ instruction manual – its genome – that contains a sequence of 30,000 genetic letters whose order is critical. Each time the virus makes a copy of itself – and it is capable of making tens of thousands by infecting a single cell – copy errors in its genome can occur.
The vast majority of these errors have no effect, but some of them can provide the virus with a greater capacity for infection or propagation, particularly if they occur in the S protein.
Source: El Pais