The highly contagious ‘Kent’ coronavirus variant was in the US six weeks before Britain sounded the alarm.
According to researchers from the University of Arizona, the B.1.1.7 lineage – as it is known scientifically – was behind a group of cases in California that were traced back to November 6th.
According to scientists, another outbreak of the variant occurred on November 23 in Florida.
The UK’s top scientific advisers – who have called for the acceleration to be spread – must first be told to the middle of government about the new version.
The team studied the genomes of 50 infected patients whose samples tested positive for the variant, and traced their lineage to estimate when the mutated virus first appeared in the country.
This retrospective study has the benefit of genomic analysis and retrieval, and the first real case of the Kent strain was only diagnosed on December 29 in an American.
‘It is striking that this generation may have been established in the US for about 5-6 weeks before B.1.1.7 was first identified in the UK in mid-December as a variant of concern,’ the researchers write.
“And it may have spread for almost two months in the US before being detected for the first time on December 29, 2020.”
The Kent variant was designated on 8 December as a variant being investigated by the UK and reclassified on 18 December as a ‘variant of concern’.
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The new variants of the coronavirus have mutations on the ear protein, which is the key for the antibodies of the immune system to hold and destroy it. Changing its shape makes it harder for the body to catch the virus.
The study has not yet been reviewed by peers, but is available online as a pre-print.
The exact origin of the Kent variant is unknown, but it is believed to have originated in mid-September.
Dr Susan Hopkins, a senior official in England for Public Health (PHE), said in December that there was originally ‘nothing that particularly indicates that this is a major problem as variants come and go’.
Mutations in viruses occur all the time, with the vast majority of them harmful or harmful to the pathogen.
Sometimes, however, the adaptations to the viral code accidentally give it an edge and increase its success, often by becoming more contagious and easier to spread.
This is what presumably occurred in the B.1.1.7 variant, which according to previous studies occurs more in the upper airways.
A mutation on the vein protein – which protrudes from the coronavirus and hijacks human cells – has made it better to infect humans.
This so-called N501Y mutation also occurs on the South African and Brazilian variants that have since been identified.
The researchers in Arizona found that all of the cases in California have another small mutation, which is seen in only 1.2 percent of European B.1.1.7 cases.
According to them, this indicates a single introductory event, probably of international travel, that gave rise to the variant in California, where it then spread from person to person.
A similar trend has been seen for the Florida number of cases, which is very similar to the most common B.1.1.7 species in the UK.
This is a ‘strong indication that they too are descended from a single introductory event’, say the scientists.
At least three major coronavirus variants have been spotted in Britain in recent months – from Kent, South Africa and Brazil – and they appear to be evolving to spread faster and evade parts of the immune system, although scientists do not think so far. came to slip completely past the vaccines
When the British government revealed that the variant was probably the reason for an increase in local affairs in the UK in mid-December, it plunged the South East, London and the East of England into Tier 3 restrictions.
The UK government’s scientific advisers have said it is up to 70 per cent more contagious than the previously dominant variant and encourages people to stay home to prevent transmission.
It is now believed to account for more than 60 per cent of all cases in the UK, but in California, between 27 December and 2 January, only 0.4 per cent of cases were of the Kent variant. At a comparable point in the UK, this figure was 1.2 per cent.
“This suggests that the dynamics of B.1.1.7 in California may be somewhat less explosive compared to the original epicenter in England,” say the researchers.
‘Clade 2 in Florida (population 21 million), on the other hand, shows faster displacement of non-B.1.1.7.’, The researchers write.
Here it was 0.7 per cent of cases 34 days after it first appeared in the state, and ‘at a comparable point in the outbreak of B.1.1.7 in England, B.1.1.7 was approx. 0.1 percent of all cases’.
‘Although apparently younger than the California clade 1 lineage, the Florida clade 2 lineage already forms a larger part of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in Florida than clade 1 of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak in California.
The B.1.1.7 lineage is currently only responsible for 0.3 percent of coronavirus infections in the US, the researchers say.
The reason for the different rate at which B.1.1.7 surpasses the existing stains remains unknown, but the researchers offer some possibilities in their study.
‘One possibility is that the transfer benefit of B.1.1.7 may vary with the mitigation intensity,’ they say.
‘Perhaps this genus of SARS-CoV-2, with demonstrably higher viral loads in the upper airway than other variants, is able to seed superspatter events with relative ease if the mitigation efforts are relatively weak, but its transmission advantage is less sharp than the game field is leveled by, for example, widespread mask use and indoor crowd avoidance.
‘Another possibility is that the non-B.1.1.7 descendants circulating in the US, especially in California, may be more transferable than the non-B.1.1.7 descendants in England with whom B.1.1.7 competing, which gives B.1.1.7 less of a transmission advantage and thus a slower travel speed of non-B.1.1.7 lines. ‘