The New Covid-19 Strain in Britain, Explained
By: Panda Go
Tags: Coronavirus, Politics, UK, Pandemic, Covid 19

Image by PIRO4D from Pixabay

December 14th, and Health Secretary Matt Hancock was on his feet in the House of Commons, delivering some sobering news about the ongoing pandemic: the virus had mutated, and the mutated strain was thought to be spreading faster, driving the rise in cases in London and the South-East. London and many parts of the South-East were to be upgraded to Tier 3 restrictions, with all restaurants, pubs, and bars all closed.

He explained that he was first briefed on the new strain on Friday, December 11th, and was given more information over the weekend between then and his announcement in the House of Commons.

But then, late on the following Friday, December 18th, NERVTAG, the expert committee responsible for identifying and analysing new and emerging respiratory virus threats, delivered their findings to the government, and the report was bleak: the virus was between 65% and 75% more transmissible than the other Sars-CoV-2 variants, and had become the dominant strain in the capital by the end of the November month-long lockdown.

The government acted swiftly, for once at least, agreeing on Saturday morning and announcing in the evening that London and all parts of the South East previously upgraded to Tier 3 would now be upgraded to a new Tier 4 of restrictions, which is very similar to the November lockdown restrictions. They also announced that in these areas, the “Christmas bubbles” plan would be abandoned entirely, with no households allowed to mix indoor at any time, and that the bubbles in the rest of the country would be limited to 3 households for just the 25th itself, not for the 5 day period initially planned and announced on December 2nd, when the lockdown ended.

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Much about this mutated strain, which has been memorably named VUI-202012/01, is not yet known. There is no known effect on the efficacy of the various vaccines, nor on the severity of the illnesses which those infected suffer on average, though it is thought that the variant causes an increased viral load, thereby making the infected more infectious. The settled view of epidemiologists and virologists is that higher viral loads worsen the illness, but that has to be confirmed with this new variant before we can be sure of that.

NERVTAG will reconvene again, following further analysis of the possible complications regarding severity, vaccine efficacy, transmissibility, and testing efficacy (both lateral flow and PCR), to advise the government in more detail about the situation and the possible responses to it.

The response will almost certainly involve drastic measures not seen since the severe and lengthy first lockdown from March through to June, such as partially shutting schools, potentially stopping students returning to universities physically, and a full national lockdown until late February or March, to give time for the vaccines to be distributed to the priority list drawn up in late November.

But there are much wider political questions that have to be answered here, both domestic and international.

Firstly, there has been concern and consternation about the UK government’s handling of this, though much of that has been misplaced. It has emerged that scientists knew of this mutation in September, and so many people have asked why we couldn’t have acted much sooner. But this is a misunderstanding of the situation — not helped by the media’s epidemiological illiteracy — as viruses mutate all the time, but it often takes a long time for any significant effects to be known. Epidemiologically or medically significant variations are rare. And, as I explained, the Health Secretary only became aware of this 2 days before introducing new restrictions, and 8 days before the further restrictions.

However, that is not to totally exonerate the government. Some have correctly pointed out that virus mutations don’t occur if there is no virus, and so many proponents of the suppression strategy, used by New Zealand to great effect both epidemiologically and economically, have used this to further their conviction, which is increasingly being vindicated, that the first lockdown was eased too soon, and that all countries, including the UK, should’ve attempted to eliminate the virus and then prevent re-entry — and, as an island, the UK would’ve had a particular advantage in this regard.

There is also an interesting point about the public health response to make here: the November lockdown appears to have driven forward the dominance of the new strain, as it brought down the R rate of the original variant to below 1, meaning its levels declined in the population, while the new variant’s R rate stayed above 1, leading to a curious pattern, unexplained at the time, of increased transmission in some affected cities such as Milton Keynes.

That is not to say that lockdowns are bad, but more that this particular lockdown suffered from bad luck. The government will now hope that the effective lockdown imposed on the hubs for the new variant will be enough to get the R down, though that seems unlikely.

And if there are still remaining questions about why it took the scientists from the obvious continued upward trend in some areas during the lockdown to December 11th to brief the Health Secretary, that delay can be explained by the combination of the natural incubation period of the virus, the short delay in information caused by the need for testing, and the additional delay caused by the need for sequencing the genetic material of the virus samples from which arose a positive PCR test, to reveal which of the variants each was. As soon as scientists had the worrying data on this at their disposal, the Health Secretary was immediately briefed.

And what does all this mean for the international community and ties with the UK?

In short, chaos. Most European nations have now temporarily shut borders with Britain, including France, which has imposed a 48-hour ban on travel from Britain, except for some limited cargo arrivals. The UK government today held a COBRA meeting, a forum for emergencies, on the possible effects of the new variant and travel bans on food supply.

It is probable, though, that the new variant is already in many other countries, given the timescales we are dealing with: the variant became prevalent enough to make international spread probable in October, and skyrocketed in November and December, with the period between the 2nd and 14th of December likely seeing significant outward international travel from the UK, and particularly from the capital, which is the main hub for the new variant.

France will probably acquiesce upon realising this, but the world is naturally worrying about the spread of this new strain. The sensible move for other countries to make is not to try to prevent the variant entering, because it already has done, but to suppress the new variant with test, trace, and isolate systems, aggressively using backwards tracing methods to find the first few infections before tracing forward. The lesson from the dichotomous levels of success between East Asia and the West is that early testing and tracing of a newly-entered virus is the only effective way of preventing the need for hefty restrictions. That remains the case with this mutated strain.

As for the public health message, it remains the same, but with greater importance and renewed purpose attached:

Wear a mask. Stay at home. Wash your hands. Practise physical distancing. And, if you have symptoms, or you are contacted by contact tracers, get a test and self-isolate yourself.