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WAlthough the country has become obsessed with Christmas restrictions for the past few weeks, the real story is elsewhere, it turns out. A new strain of the coronavirus emerged a couple of months ago, probably somewhere in the northeast corner of Kent, but went unnoticed for weeks. New viruses emerge all the time, but they usually don’t cause problems. And it usually takes a long time for a new strain, starting with a single case, to become visible to public health authorities.
In fact, we have one of the most comprehensive and sensitive molecular surveillance systems in the world and that allowed us to detect this strain relatively quickly. However, the virus has also moved fast, very fast, and has spread beyond Kent to Essex, London and elsewhere.
For its part, the government has also acted swiftly, placing Kent at level 3 after the lockdown, despite the outrage of many of its MPs. It then placed London and other parts of the South East under similar restrictions, as evidence emerged that the increase in cases could be due to a new strain.
A week later, our initial fears seem to be confirmed and the government has had to act again. It will be enough? We will have to wait. But we must remember that this tension increased rapidly during the last blockade. To prevent it from spreading, we will have to impose even stricter restrictions. The virus is likely to have spread much further than the South East, so action will need to be taken across large parts of the UK to have the desired effect.
And then we have to look at the state of the epidemic as a whole. We already have a high incidence in much of the country with overburdened hospitals and NHS staff under significant pressure. Much of the population, and our political leaders, are tired of these restrictions. There was an astonishing degree of consensus during the first lockdown that while the measures were tough, they were the right thing to do. That consensus has started to deteriorate in recent months. If our initial analyzes are correct, then the country faces a new and very serious threat from this new virus. We will have to come together, once again, to fight it, to buy the time we need to launch an effective vaccine.
John Edmunds, Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
