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During the first wave of Covid-19 in Britain, many scientists, including Anthony Costello, who signed the article in question, insisted that the government should follow a strategy of “maximum suppression” or even “zero coronavirus”.
According to guardian, one of the many reasons for this was to prevent natural choice from doing its job. When a virus is allowed to spread, it spends time on different hosts, evolving and mutating.
Scientists have now found “Mutated” variant of the virus that causes Covid-19, which has 17 changes in its genetic sequences, including changes in the protein spike that allows the virus to enter our cells.
The government’s strategy
Despite the warnings, the British government’s strategy during the pandemic was to curb the spread of the virus and reduce pressure on the National Health Service (NHS), rather than trying to eliminate Covid entirely.
On March 13, the Scientific Advisory Group on Emergency Management (Sage) had indicated that “measures aimed at completely suppressing the spread of Covid-19 will lead to a second peak.”
The advisers warned that countries such as China, where a strong crackdown had already begun, “will experience a second peak once measures are relaxed.” Rather than eradicating the coronavirus, Britain’s logic was to learn to live with it.
Nine months later, China and South Korea recorded 3 and 12 deaths per million people, respectively. By contrast, the UK records 970 deaths per million people.
Scientists expected the virus that causes Covid-19 to have only one or two mutations each month, but with around 2 million people infected in the UK, there are many more opportunities for the virus to mutate.
Dealing with the new variant
The new variant appears to accelerate the transmission of the coronavirus. Many wonder if this will affect the efficacy of vaccines, but this is something that scientists could probably fix rather quickly by adapting the RNA encoding of new vaccines. However, it is not certain whether the new variant of the virus will change the severity of Covid-19 in those infected with it.
The truth is that the greater the number of infected people, the greater the probability that a virus will develop.
The government rightly fears that a possible increase in cases in the south of England, where transmission is alarmingly high, will spread across the country and EU member states have banned travel and commercial transport from the UK, in an effort to stop the spread of the variant.
The measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus are almost the same as before: restricting the participation of members of different households, social distance, travel bans, rapid tests, contact detection and isolation, masks, hand hygiene, schools closed and teleworking .
For now, the UK government’s priority must be to scale up vaccines as soon as possible and provide adequate support to those affected by the lockdown and quarantine measures.
The recent increase cannot be explained solely by the mutation of the virus. In fact, mismanagement of the pandemic by the government has led to many more people being infected, creating the conditions for mutations to occur.
The Johnson administration’s failures to respond to the pandemic are widespread. A faster lockdown, just a week earlier in the spring, could cut the death toll in half, according to Sage’s adviser Nick Davis. Ministers have wasted billions outsourcing a supposedly “world-class unmatched” case detection and testing system to private companies. However, they did not control self-isolation rates and provided minimal financial support to those forced to quarantine in their homes.
Following the opening of Britain in the spring, infection rates fell, but the government again failed to do what it had to do in time to curb the virus. Poor government control of Covid-19 increased the dynamics of the diaspora and allowed more mutations to occur.
In addition to the financial cost of restrictive measures, the UK is now isolated from the international community. Boris Johnson’s repeated hesitations, delays and apparent inability to make unpopular decisions have led Britain to have one of the worst death rates in the world.
Now, it has canceled Christmas, causing an international alarm, and the only thing that can hope is not to be in the same place until Easter.
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