Coronavirus News LIVE Updates: The new coronavirus variant discovered in Britain with a higher transmission rate is not yet out of control and can be contained using existing measures, the World Health Organization said on Monday. “We have had a much higher (contamination rate) at different points in this pandemic and we’ve got it under control,” WHO’s emergencies chief Michael Ryan told a press conference. “So this situation is not in that sense out of control. But it cannot be left to its own devices.” British Health Secretary Matt Hancock had earlier claimed the new variant was “out of control”, with British officials saying it was 70 percent more transmissible than the main strain. “The measures we currently have in place are the correct measures,” Ryan said. “We need to do what we have been doing, we may just have to do it with a little more intensity and for a little longer to make sure we can bring this virus under control.”
Roughly 30 countries shut their borders to people travelling from Britain or South Africa — where another variant has emerged — to stop any further spread. “In some senses, it means we have to work harder,” Ryan said. “Even if the virus has become a little bit more efficient in spreading, the virus can be stopped.”
Meanwhile, the US said it is not yet certain whether the new coronavirus variant discovered in Britain is more contagious, but it is conducting studies to learn more. Moncef Slaoui, chief advisor to the Operation Warp Speed vaccine program, added he expected that lab experiments would show the new strain would respond to existing vaccines and treatments. While several countries have shut their borders to Britain, Slaoui said it was possible the variant has long been prevalent in the United Kingdom — but that scientists had not begun looking for it until now, creating the impression of a surge when they did.
“There is no hard evidence that this virus is actually more transmissible, (but) there is clear evidence that there is more of it in the population,” the vaccine scientist and former pharmaceutical executive said. “It may be just seeding happened in the shadows and we’re seeing now a surge, or maybe it has higher transmissibility.” “What’s clear is it’s not more pathogenic,” he continued, meaning it hasn’t been shown to cause more severe disease.
On the question of contagiousness, in order to determine cause and effect, experiments would need to be carried out on animals in which they are co-housed and deliberately infected, he said. This would show the level of viral load required to infect another animal.
The National Institutes for Health (NIH) had begun lab studies on the variant to determine whether antibodies against the more dominant strain of Covid-19 will be effective against it, said Slaoui. “Which is very likely the expected outcome,” he said.
The tests will use antibodies taken from recovered patients, antibodies raised by vaccines, and synthetic lab-made antibodies, and would take a few weeks to carry out.
Slaoui added he was optimistic that antibodies produced in response to Covid-19 vaccines would continue to be effective, because they bind to several “epitopes” or regions of the spike protein.
The spike protein is the three-dimensional surface molecule the virus uses to invade human cells, and is what gives the microbe its crown or “corona” like appearance. The chances that a single mutation would alter all these regions at once are “extremely low,” he said.
But, he cautioned: “Whether someday, somewhere, a virus may turn out to escape the protective response produced by the vaccine is impossible to exclude, so we have to remain absolutely vigilant.”
In related news, the NIH is also planning a clinical trial involving highly allergic individuals to see how they respond to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, said Slaoui. The move comes after several people across the US and Britain had allergic reactions to the Pfizer vaccine.
