The new mutant variant of the “super” coronavirus is in fact more infectious than the previous variants, just as scientists feared, a new study has found.
Researchers at Imperial College London found that the new variant that is wreaking havoc in the UK could be almost 50% more transmissible, based on samples collected from almost 86,000 Britons.
In the study published online yesterday, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, researchers at Imperial College determined that the ‘R’ number for the new variant of B117 is between 0.4 and 0.7 points higher than other variants.
The ‘R’ number for a virus describes the average number of additional cases that each infection leads to.
In the UK, the most recent R number is between 1.1 and 1.3, government figures show. This means that, on average, every 10 infected people will infect between 11 and 13 others.
The charts in the new study show how, over the course of eight weeks, the new variant became increasingly common (highest points on each chart) in the United Kingdom and became more transmissible (rightmost points on each chart show R numbers rising rates, or transmission rates
In the photo: screen capture of the Imperial College report showing case trends involving the new coronavirus strain, where the% S rate indicates the transport of the new variant
Pictured: graphics from the Imperial College report showing the age distribution of people carrying the new Covid-19 variant
Meanwhile, on average in the U.S., each infected person currently leads to 1.15 more infections, according to daily RT.live calculations.
By this measure of transmissibility, the R number in the U.S. ranges from about 0.86 in Alaska to 1.23 in Maine, which emerged as a critical point this week.
The new variant was first detected in the UK in September, the study says, but in early December it exploded and sparked an outbreak of infections among the British.
The spread of the new variant of SARS-CoV-2, or Variant of Concern 202012/01 (VOC), in England occurs despite a layered system in place as part of efforts to control the spread of the virus.
Most of England is at ‘Tier 4’, the strictest level, but is still seeing a record number of daily Covid-19 infections, despite the measures.
The Imperial College London researchers sequenced the genomes of 1,904 people infected with the new variant and compared the speed with which the virus spread to a wider sample of other samples taken from more than 48,000 people in England.
As they expected, they found that the new virus did indeed have a ‘selective advantage over the SARS-CoV-2 variants in circulation in England’, they wrote in the online publication on Thursday.
The variant was also disproportionately common among people in their 20s, and those who lived in the south east and east of England and London.
The new study’s findings mean that each person who catches this mutated virus will transmit it to up to 0.7 more people on average.
To date, there is no evidence to suggest that the new variant causes more serious disease or is more fatal.
Encouragingly, virologists and public health experts believe that vaccines made by companies like AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Moderna will still be effective against the new variant of the coronavirus.
But the new variant heats the race between the spread of the virus and vaccination campaigns in the United Kingdom, USA – where the new variant has already been found in Colorado, California and Florida – and at least 31 other countries where the most infectious form of coronavirus was detected.
With more than 186,000 people infected in a single day on average in the U.S., the 48% higher transmissibility rate of 1.85 can lead to new infections per day in excess of 275,000.
This could spell disaster for hospitals at critical points like California, where some health systems and regions are already without ICU beds, in states of ‘internal disaster’ and care rationing.
There are similar fears in the UK about the National Health Service (NHS) and its ability to deal with the number of coronavirus patients that are expected as the new variant of the disease continues to spread.
Sharing data from a separate study by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), Deepti Gurdasani – a senior professor at Queen Mary University of London in Epidemiology and statistical genetics – warned that ‘B117 is dominant or very close to dominant in most regions’ in England.
Over the course of six weeks, the researchers saw how the transmission rate (R) of the new variant of the coronavirus became higher (orange) than those of other variants, especially in southeastern England, eastern England and London.
Meanwhile, only 3.17 million Americans were vaccinated as of Friday, according to a Bloomberg News count.
The CDC count puts the number even lower. The agency’s website informs that its vaccination tracker will be updated every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, but at the time of publication, the tool displayed the numbers for Wednesday, with 2.79 million vaccinated.
Bloomberg’s highest estimate means that Operation Warp Speed vaccinated only 16 percent of the 20 million Americans it promised to vaccinate by the end of the year.
At this rate, it would take almost a decade to vaccinate all adult members of the American population of 331 million people.
And many Americans remain in doubt about whether to get a vaccine, even when one is available. About 60 percent of nursing home workers in Ohio said they would refuse an injection.
The slow and dysfunctional distribution of the vaccine and the Americans’ distrust of vaccines may, together, offer the B117 variant only the opening it needs to spread like wildfire across the country, infecting millions beyond the 20 million people who once had it. the infection in the USA and killing thousands.
