Variants of Covid-19
I first read about a Covid variant, named B.1.1.7., which was first detected in Britain, in December 2020. This is almost a year after reading about a strange new coronavirus first reported in Wuhan, China, in late December 2019, which was named SARS-CoV-2. The disease that we are all now so familiar with was named Covid-19; now it is just Covid. In the early weeks, we did not know what to expect, but as cases mounted and the virus crossed borders, more information became available. By March 11, the WHO declared Covid a pandemic. And our lives have not been the same since then.
Scientists today know a lot about Covid, and so does the public through media reports. If the public wants to be informed, they can be. There are no shortage of excellent news sites and reportage. For example, in the last month or so, there have been Covid variants reported in South Africa and in Brazil. Scientists are naturally concerned. There are two stories, both in The New Yorker, which caught my attention. The first is about Britain, where the first variant was detected and reported.
In “The New Covid-19 Variant Sends Britain Into a Crisis,” published online in The New Yorker (January 21, 2021), Anna Russell writes:
Much of that number can be traced back to the government’s slow response to the emergence of a new variant of the virus, known as B.1.1.7, which has ripped through Britain in recent weeks. First detected in the south of England in late September, B.1.1.7. is between thirty and fifty per cent more transmissible than previous forms of covid-19, scientists estimate. Its rise has been startling. On December 14th, the health secretary, Matt Hancock, alerted Parliament to the existence of the strain. Days later, Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser, warned that it was “becoming the dominant variant,” “beating all the others.” On December 22nd, sage scientists called for an increase in restrictions to slow the new variant’s spread. Still, in many parts of the country, families were allowed to gather for Christmas. A national lockdown didn’t come into effect until January 4th, by which point hospitals in England were seeing forty per cent more covid-19 cases than during the April peak. In a pandemic, every day counts.
There is no evidence that the U.K. variant is more deadly, or that it will be resistant to a vaccine. Still, Martin McKee, a professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, called B.1.1.7 “very, very worrying.” “What seems to be happening with it is people infected with it are having a higher viral load,” he told me. The new variant may cause more of the virus to lodge in the upper respiratory tract, making transmission through conversation or, heaven forbid, a cough, more probable. There’s also some evidence that B.1.1.7 can get into cells more easily, through a mutation in the spike protein. All of these factors push the transmission rate, or the “R number,” beyond the point at which the U.K.’s current restrictions are effective in bringing down the numbers, McKee, who is also a member of Independent sage, said. “That’s the really alarming thing.”
It is easy to understand the disappointment in the language, in that simple statement. There has been effort made, even great effort made in vaccine distribution and getting people vaccinated, but perhaps not enough in convincing the public. What is particularly lacking is the public accepting and trusting the governments in where they reside when they say this is a severe and serious virus. The straightforward message is not working; this is compounded by blatantly false information, put out there by conspiracy theorists and non-scientists. In other words, by those not in the know.
That in itself is a concern, since there are other variants or strains first detected in South Africa and in Brazil. This is discussed in another article, also published in the January 21, 2021, online issue of The New Yorker, this one by Lawrence Wright, and entitled, “Can the Covid-19 Vaccine Beat the Proliferation of New Virus Mutations”:
A month after the new variant was uncovered in England, a similar lineage emerged in South Africa, called B.1.351.It quickly became the dominant variant in that country and began its own tour of the world. It has the same mutation as B.1.1.7, which allows it to adhere more tightly to the ace2 receptors, but it also carries an additional mutation that is far more concerning. The mutation is denominated E484K, meaning that the amino acid, glutamic acid (code letter E), has been replaced by another, lysine (code letter K), in position 484 of the genetic sequence of the spike protein. This tiny alteration may possibly make the vaccine less effective against it. In a lab experiment, the E484K mutation caused greater than tenfold drop of immunity in the antibodies of some covid-19 survivors. The vaccines that are being deployed now should still be effective, researchers have said, but clearly the virus is evolving new strategies that make it more contagious and less able to be corralled by a vaccine.
Yet another dangerous variant, B.1.1.28, turned up in Brazil. A forty-five-year-old health-care worker in the northeastern part of the country, who had no comorbidities, got covid-19 in May of 2020. She was sick for a week with diarrhea, muscle aches, exhaustion, and pain while swallowing, but she fully recovered. Then, in October, a hundred and fifty-three days later, she fell ill again with covid-19, and, this time, the disease was more severe.
Worrisome. What is going on here? Well, say scientists who study viruses, this is perfectly predictable and normal for viruses. They mutate, so as to increase their chances of survival, by changing their structure and finding new human hosts to attach to and thus replicate. So, we now know of three variants: B.1.1.7 from Britain, B.1.351 (also called 501Y. V2) from South Africa, and B.1.1.28 from Brazil, each which could prove problematic to efforts to reducing transmission, to reducing illness, to reducing hospitalizations, and to reducing mortality. It is easy to say this is not at all good news in the battle against Covid, because it isn’t.
The British and South African variants or strains have made their way to Canada, the country where I reside. In an
article ( “How the spread of coronavirus variants could completely change the pandemic in Canada;” January 15, 2022), Aaron Miller writes:
Dr. Adalsteinn Brown, dean of the University of Toronto's Dalla Lana School of Public Health and co-chair of Ontario's COVID-19 science advisory table, said if B117 continues to spread in Ontario the rate of new cases could rise to "scary," "almost near-vertical" levels.
"I wouldn't be surprised if by the time we prove that there is community transmission definitively, it's already spread like wildfire," said Hota. "It's just the nature of the beast."
Brown added the variant could already be driving "a very dramatic growth in cases" in certain parts of the province, similar to the way it did in the United Kingdom despite strict public health restrictions.
What many scientists say is that these variants could soon, by March, become the dominant strains of Covid-19, a variant that is more contagious. The solution is to reduce risk by following public health guidelines, notably avoiding large gatherings, wearing a face covering and washing hands.
And, of great importance, getting vaccinated when it’s your turn. Vaccines train our bodies to build antibodies against a specific virus, which is the case for the Covid vaccines. According to the Vaccine Queue Calculator for Canada (developed by Steven Wooding and Jasmine Mah), based on current vaccine stockpiles, the earliest I will get the vaccine is early July.