© Mei James / Zuma Press
The emergence of new variants of the virus that causes Covid-19 – including one in the UK that British officials say could be more deadly than earlier versions – indicates a future in which health authorities are locked in a cat-and-mouse battle with a shape-shifting pathogen.
Faster spread of coronavirus strains that researchers fear could also make people sicker or make vaccines less effective, and that eliminates threats, leading to more hospitalizations and deaths, epidemiologists warn. But, they said, that does not mean the infection cannot be curtailed.
“We live in a world where coronavirus is so prevalent and mutating rapidly that new variants are about to appear,” Anthony Harnden, a doctor advising the British government, told Sky News. “We could very well be in a situation where we finally have to have an annual coronavirus vaccine” to deal with emerging strains.
As the new variant spread across the country across the UK, hospitals were under more stress than in the first wave of the pandemic in the spring, and the national Covid-19 death toll is expected to exceed 100,000 in the coming days. But in the week ending Sunday, new daily cases declined by 22% from the previous seven days.
Matt Hancock, the UK’s health secretary, said it was due to national restrictions that have been in place since the beginning of the year. But in a television interview, Mr. Hancock warns: ‘We are a long, long, long road’ before business would be low enough to lift restrictions.
The British variant is one of several that have emerged in recent months to arouse concern among researchers. Others have emerged in South Africa and Brazil.
Anthony Fauci, president Biden’s chief medical adviser to the Covid-19 pandemic, told CBS on Sunday that U.S. authorities should extend genomic surveillance to identify variants of the virus.
Dr Fauci said the current vaccines remain effective. ‘What we will already do and do is make preparations for the possibility that we will have to change and upgrade the vaccines along the way. We do not have to do it now, “he said. “The best way to prevent the further evolution of these mutants is to vaccinate as many people as possible with the vaccines we currently have available.”
Jeffrey Barrett, director of the Covid-19 Genomics Initiative at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, said the large number of cases around the world has given the virus many opportunities to develop in ways not previously seen in the pandemic.
“In the next phase of the pandemic, we will really have to contend with these new variants in the virus,” he said at an online seminar last week. ‘Something has happened that has basically created a new constellation of mutations’, which presents scientists with new challenges.
The variant probably delays the day when life can get closer to normal thanks to vaccines and increases the possibility of outbreaks of infections from time to time, even after large numbers of people are vaccinated. And its rise also suggests that international travel restrictions – where governments ban people coming from places where more worrying versions of the virus occur – could apply at intervals for years.
The likelihood that many people in poorer countries will not have access to vaccines for some time indicates that more new variants will incubate around the world, even if the levels of immunity in the developed world are high enough to spread the disease. virus to limit.
The British announcement on Friday that the British variant that now dominates infections across the country – and is also well established in the US – could be more deadly than earlier versions of the virus, is tentative and can be unduly pessimistic.
It is based on the assessment of an advisory panel to the government which in turn used four separate academic studies of raw data to decide that there is a ‘realistic possibility’ that the variant is more lethal.
The studies suggested that a greater percentage of people with this variant end up in the hospital or die. This does not indicate that a patient would die more in the hospital once than when he or she was admitted to the hospital with a previous variant.
Faster spreading variants imply that for any given level of constraints, cases will rise faster or fall slower than with previous versions. This suggests that locks, which are still level, will have to take longer to bring matters down.
So far, scientists have not seen evidence that the British variant, first identified in September in the south-east of England, is more resistant to vaccines. But another variant that was first identified in South Africa has a mutation that can reduce the effectiveness of vaccines.
As vaccination programs around the world begin, they should start reducing the number of people who are seriously ill. If vaccines also confer some immunity and prevent serious illnesses – something hitherto unknown – it will turn the case curve downwards.
Vaccine-resistant variants will slow such downward momentum until scientists adjust the vaccinations to capture the new variants as well. Some new vaccine technologies, such as those used in the two mRNA vaccines now allowed in the US, can be adapted relatively quickly to deal with new mutations.
Coronaviruses mutate less frequently than certain others, such as influenza viruses that require annual vaccination to cope with new variants. However, the virus responsible for Covid-19 appears to mutate frequently enough to indicate that people being vaccinated need frequent shots to maintain their protection against the virus.
The good news in the UK is that its vaccination program is progressing fast, faster than any of its European counterparts. As of Saturday, nearly 6.4 million people had received at least one dose for the coronavirus vaccine, and Mr. Hancock said three-quarters of the people over the age of 80, as well as people in three-quarters received from nursing homes across the country. a shot.
Write to Stephen Fidler at [email protected]
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