Day: 21st December 2020

There is a new variant of COVID-19 in the UK

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On Saturday 19th December, millions of people were thrown into uncertainty when the UK government announced that Christmas was effectively cancelled. Plans to allow people to travel without restrictions for up to five days were scuppered by the emergence of a new variant of the virus.

Here’s what we know so far:

  • The variant is named VUI-202012/01.
  • It was detected by the Covid-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) consortium
  • There have been more than 1000 cases so far
  • It’s been detected in at least 60 local authorities within the UK
  • It was first spotted in September but seems to be causing a rise of case across the UK now

According to Public Health England, the new variant is not necessarily more dangerous, although research is currently underway.

SARS-CoV-2 is an RNA virus and mutations are expected to occur as it replicates. Some variants with changes in the spike protein have already been observed as the virus is intensely sequenced here in the UK and around the world. There is no evidence that the newly-reported variant results in a more severe disease.

Professor Wendy Barclay, head of the department of infectious disease, Imperial College London.

In terms of the vaccine, the mutation that’s caused the new variant has been located in the spike protein — the area targeted by the vaccine. This means it should still be effective. However, more research is being done and we will know more in the coming weeks.

Source: BMJ 2020;371:m4857 (link), Science Focus (link)

It’s still going to be a difficult winter

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It is still going to be a very difficult winter. Distributing millions of vaccines will take months, so there will be a period where some people have natural immunity and others have vaccine immunity, while others remain vulnerable. Moreover, we don’t know how long vaccine immunity will last. While it would be great to get a vaccine on a Monday and celebrate your newfound immunity at a party on Tuesday, that’s not how it works. Those who are lucky to get a vaccine early in the process owe it to their communities to continue wearing masks and distancing until new cases and hospitalizations subside to near zero.”

—Dave O’Connor, PhD, University of Wisconsin Medical Foundation Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison