South African coronavirus variant ‘more problematic’ than UK

A variant of the coronavirus identified in South Africa is more problematic than the strain found in the United Kingdom, Britain’s health minister said, as both strains continue to spread rapidly.

Speaking to the BBC on Monday, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the variant found in South Africa was of particular concern.

“I am extremely concerned about the South African variant and that is why we have taken the steps we have taken to restrict all flights from South Africa,” he told the BBC Today program.

“This is a very, very significant problem … and it is even more problematic than the new UK variant.”

Both the UK and South Africa are battling an outbreak of Covid-19 infections, which have been largely attributed to new mutations in the virus that make it more transmissible.

The new UK variant was first identified in Kent, south east England, in December. UK authorities have alerted the World Health Organization to its emergence.

Experts note that while the new variant makes the virus spread more easily, it does not appear to make it more deadly. However, hospitals in the UK are under pressure from a dramatic increase in infections and hospitalizations.

Questions have been raised about how coronavirus vaccines will work against the new variants.

Several experts said they hoped that vaccines – such as those from Pfizer and BioNTech, and from Oxford University / AstraZeneca – would protect against new strains.

In early December, WHO’s chief scientist, Soumya Swaminathan, tried to defuse fears about the variants, telling the BBC that the most recent mutations were “very unlikely” that the current vaccines would not work. The WHO said more research is needed “to understand the impact of specific mutations on viral properties and the effectiveness of diagnostics, therapies and vaccines”.

Regius, professor of medicine at Oxford University, John Bell, said on Sunday that the variant identified in South Africa was worrying in this regard.

“They both have multiple different mutations, so they are not a single mutation,” he told Times Radio. “And the mutations associated with the South African form are really substantial changes in the structure of the protein (peak of the virus).”

He said there were doubts whether the vaccines from Pfizer / BioNTech and the University of Oxford / AstraZeneca would be “disabled” in the presence of such mutations.

The team behind the Oxford University jab was investigating the effect of the variants on his vaccine, he said, adding that his hunch was that it would still be effective against the strain identified in the UK, but he was more uncertain about what it was. identified in South Africa.

However, he told the radio station that if the vaccine did not work on this variant, then it was likely that the vaccines could be adapted and it would not take more than a year.

Coronavirus vaccines are the only bright spot in a pandemic that continues to rage in the West. On Monday, the United Kingdom began launching the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine after starting to deploy the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine in December.

In the meantime, restrictions on public life continue and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has suggested that further restrictions could be introduced in England. Many parts of the country are already effectively closed, with all stores except the essentials closed and people being advised to stay at home as long as possible. Still, other restrictions could be introduced in parts of the country with more flexible measures.

The UK has recorded more than 2.6 million cases of the virus and more than 75,000 deaths to date, according to a Johns Hopkins University count, and the new variant of the virus has caused an increase in infections in London and the south-east. and it’s starting to show up in other parts of the country.

In South Africa, more than 1.1 million cases have been reported and almost 30,000 deaths and the new strain has become dominant in the Western Cape, Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.

The variant originally identified in the UK has also been discovered in some European countries and the United States, leading many nations to ban flights from the UK. For its part, the United Kingdom has banned visitors from South Africa.