Scientists are worried about new research on the British coronavirus variant

The coronavirus variant that originated in the UK now belongs to the world, and increasing evidence confirms the early suspicion of some scientists: it is a super-distributor that can turbo the pandemic and less transmissible strains of the virus in the UK. forgetfulness muscle.

Now that the new variant has established a beach head in the United States and in more than 40 other countries, the race to limit it is underway. The contest pits people armed with vaccine, masks and hand sanitizer against a viral strain with a handful of genetic changes that sparked the fear from the moment it was detected.

There is good news: researchers who have measured and modeled the powers of the British variant have found no reason to believe that it makes people sick as soon as it invades their bodies. It also does not seem to take the time it takes for a newly infected person to spread the virus – a development that can cause fast-moving waves of new patients.

And other new research reinforces the case that the COVID-19 vaccines administered in the United States and elsewhere should protect against the new variant.

But other findings are more ominous. Using many different methods to detect the British variant and compare it with its predecessors, two groups of researchers concluded that the rapid growth of the new strain in Britain could not be dismissed as a fluke.

And as fast as the new tribe has spread in its homeland, it intends to do even better here. Once established in the US – a prospective expert considers it inevitable – it will require more stringent public health measures than hitherto adopted, a faster vaccination of vaccines and a much greater willingness to be vaccinated.

“We’re losing the race to coronavirus – it infects humans much faster than we can get vaccinated in humans’ arms, and it overcomes our social distance,” said biologist Derek Cummings, an expert on emerging pathogens. “Now there is this variant that will make the race even harder.”

According to the new research, it appears that the genetic changes of the new variant have increased the transmissibility by about 56%, although it can be as low as 40% and up to 70%.

With this competitive advantage, it will quickly become the most common strain in any region where it gets a tone. If this happens, coronavirus infections – and the increased disease, hospitalizations and deaths as a result – will swell.

“The bottom line is that it will be harder to control this new variant if it takes over,” said Ira Longini, a modeler of infectious diseases at the University of Florida, who was not involved in any of the UK studies.

And it will take over, he added.

The superpower of the new variant, as evidenced by Britain, is its ability to plow through public health rails and reproduce with ease. It spread for at least a month and probably longer before being detected by keen-eyed (and well-funded) geneticists in the UK.

Travel ban was predictably useless to bottle it up. The variant, known to scientists as B.1.1.7, has so far appeared in 47 countries, including countries as far away as Australia, Chile and Japan.

As early as 2009, disease hunters saw strains of influenza virus eradicated with some new genetic modifications within a year of existing strains, Longini said.

“I do not see what that would stop,” he said. “It must be spread across the planet.”

What does such improved portability mean? Imagine a party of maskless people, none of whom have the immunity to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. If a single person with a typical strain walks in for a few hours and mixes, two to three extra people will likely go home infected.

If the same party were infected with B.1.1.7, the virus would find 3.5 to 4.3 new victims in the course of the same event.

This difference may seem small, but as new generations become infected, its effect will increase. In a month, a single person with the British variant can produce 150 new infections – almost four times the 39 cases arising from a person with an older strain of the coronavirus.

In fact, the British variant is likely to offer a bit more resistance in the United States. At this stage of the pandemic, as many as one in five party guests are already infected and gaining some immunity that can be helpful. In addition, there will likely be social distancing, the party can be held outside and many participants wear masks.

Under these circumstances, someone with a typical SARS-CoV-2 strain is likely to find a single person to infect; on a rare happy evening for the virus, two people would remain infected. At this rate, the pandemic grows relatively stately and after a month, a total of three people are infected.

B.1.1.7 changes this picture. A carrier at the same party will pass on his infection to 1.5 others to two other victims. After one month, the initial case results in 11 to 16 new infections.

In the contest among viral tribes, this competitive advantage is important. A virus’ purpose is to find and invade new bodies. The variant that succeeds in capturing more of them, and in turn infecting even more bodies, will fall before its competitors and establish its dominion.

In short order, the timid tribes are completely driven out of the landscape, and the tumultuous newcomer calls the shots from the pandemic.

Experts warn, for example, that the increased portability of B.1.1.7 will increase the proportion of the population that needs to be vaccinated to bring about herd immunity and put an end to the pandemic.

To deny a virus enough new victims to keep the pandemic alive, you need to surround more of its carriers with non-infectious – in other words, vaccinated – people who will stand in the way and make transmission more difficult. The better a virus is infected with the infection of new victims, the more uninfected people you need in the population to block the way to a new victim.

Even before the threat of B.1.1.7 was fully understood, U.S. health officials had compiled their estimates of how many Americans would need to be vaccinated to establish herd immunity here. Although their early guesses were about 70% of the population, experts, including dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease specialist, raises their target to 85%.

In a survey completed in early December, the Kaiser Family Foundation found that only 71% of Americans would definitely or likely take a COVID-19 vaccine. Other recent surveys reported that the percentage of willing Americans was barely more than half.

In Britain, the increased contagion of the British strain has been shown by two groups of researchers using various techniques.

The first group, an influential team of infectious disease modelers from Imperial College London, used genetic sequencing techniques that enabled them to bump time infections and track the progression of the virus through a population. They compared the growth of B.1.1.7 in three different regions of England and found the same growth patterns in all of them.

For further confirmation, they examined hundreds of positive coronavirus tests. In the rudimentary genetic screen widely used to confirm an infection, the British tribe displays a sign, betraying the presence of unique changes.

With this measure, researchers have also enabled the location and growth rates of the new genetic variant – and its constant ability to move other strains aside – to estimate how much more transmissible it is. And they said the rapid growth could not be explained by local conditions (such as a particularly vulnerable population of older citizens) or environmental conditions (such as colder weather that forced people to spend more time indoors) that put the new variant above existing viral strains.

The second group of researchers, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, used many of the same techniques. They fitted outbreak data into mathematical models to indicate the similarity of B.1.1.7’s footprint across different regions and to investigate possible reasons for the consistency they observed.

They concluded that the rapid rise of infections in Britain had to be fueled by one or more of the changes in the genetic code of the new variant, although they are not sure what difference made the difference.

This is a distraction. But experts said it was good.

“If you could give me one piece of evidence from these studies, I would say I’m not buying it in full,” said UC Irvine biostatistician Vladimir Minin. He was not involved in any of the studies. ‘But the writers have provided quite a bit of evidence that even the skeptics among us could not dismiss. This is pretty good evidence that it really is a faster spreading virus. ‘

In a country that is already struggling to get people to wear masks, stay home and avoid gatherings, vaccines seem to be the only way out. And the advent of B.1.1.7 is a stronger case than ever before for the priority of the elderly and those who are likely to become seriously ill or die from an infection, Drs. Marc Lipsitch, director of Harvard’s Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics said. In this way, even if Americans cannot stop the spread of a more challenging virus, vaccines can “ward off” its impact, he said.

But first, Cummings said, they need to get time to work. And it will require more draconian efforts for public health if additional deaths are to be prevented.

This is a moment similar to the early days of the pandemic, when Americans were asked to make sacrifices to flatten the curve to give hospitals time to provide ventilators, protective equipment and health workers to catch up. This time, the curve to be flattened is steeper.

Yet Cummings said, ‘we must not give up and say it is a lost cause. Every week we get help us. We have these public health tools and we can all do something to slow down infections and give us more time to get the vaccines out. ”