British Prime Minister Boris Johnson suggested on Friday that the coronavirus variant discovered in the UK could be more deadly than other versions of the virus, although public health officials emphasize that there is a lot of uncertainty surrounding this finding.
“In addition to spreading faster,” Johnson said during a news conference, “it now also appears that there is some evidence that the new variant first identified in London … may be associated with a higher degree of mortality.”
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The variant was first identified last September and was associated with the increase in infections seen in the UK at the end of last year. It is widely accepted that the variant is more contagious, although scientists have already said that it does not appear to be more harmful.
Johnson’s announcement was based on a report by the New and Emerging Respiratory Viruses Advisory Group, or NERVTAG. The data is preliminary and found that, among a subset of patients, there appears to be an increase in mortality in those who were infected with the UK variant, called B.1.1.7, compared to other variants.
“If you catch a man in his 60s, the average risk is that for a thousand people infected, about 10 will sadly die from the virus,” said Dr. Patrick Vallance, the UK’s leading scientific advisor, during the news conference. press. “With the new variant, for a thousand infected people, it can be expected that about 13 or 14 will die.”
But Vallance advised caution. “I want to emphasize that there is a lot of uncertainty around these numbers and we need more work to have precise control over that.”
Others agreed that more research is needed.
“There is evidence from some, but not all, of the data sources that suggest that the concern variant first detected in the UK may lead to a higher risk of death than the non-variant,” Dr Susan Hopkins, director of response Public Health England’s strategic plan, said in a statement. “Evidence for this variant is still emerging and more work is underway to fully understand how it behaves.”
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement that the agency had contacted colleagues in the UK, but “has not yet seen the data nor had the opportunity to speak to colleagues in the UK”.
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Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Center for Global Health Science and Safety at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, said the UK data is not “particularly convincing” and does not take into account a number of unrelated reasons for a higher mortality, including quality of care.
Dr. Charles Chiu, professor of laboratory medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, said he “would hesitate to draw any conclusions from that information about the variant’s virulence without much more data, because there are so many potentially confusing factors that can explain these observations. . “
“I saw no evidence that the new variant B.1.1.7 in the UK or any variant of SARS-CoV-2 is more deadly,” said Chiu, referring to the virus that causes Covid-19.
The new NERVTAG report is “hard to dismiss,” said Jason Kindrachuk, assistant professor of medical microbiology and infectious diseases at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. But he also emphasized that the findings would have to be confirmed with laboratory research.
Even so, the possibility is worrying. And for those at high risk of complications with Covid-19, the prospect of a more deadly variant is a cause for concern.
“An increase in the lethality rate is certainly possible with a virus that has increased its transmission capacity,” said Ian Jones, professor of virology at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, in a statement. “But as dark as it sounds, the fact that the death rate is 1% or 1.3% does not really change the fact that for a minority of people this is a very dangerous virus that must be avoided.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently suggested that the UK variant could be the predominant strain in the United States in March. Given that there is already evidence that the variant makes the virus more transmissible, mitigation efforts, such as facial coverage, physical distance and regular hand washing, are more important than ever.
Vallance also noted that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine appears to be effective against the UK variant.
Just two days ago, “Pfizer-BioNTech conducted studies showing that there was very good neutralization of the variant virus by blood collected from people who were vaccinated,” said Vallance.
“So there is growing confidence, along with what I consider to be a very important clinical observation, that individuals who were previously infected and generated antibodies appear to be equally protected against the new virus and the old variant.”
This means that it is essential to vaccinate people quickly.
“I don’t know if there are any more alarms that might sound to say that we have to discover the launch of vaccines and put them in people’s arms, not just in the US or Canada, but around the world,” said Kindrachuk.
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