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– The variant seen in the UK has several changes, i.e. mutations and deletions. Some of these have been seen in viruses in Norway as well, but not in the combination reported by the UK, the Line Vold department head at FHI informs NTB.
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson, announced this Saturday afternoon that they are tightening the measures in London and the south-east region of England due to the new mutation.
Also in Denmark, they have discovered the virus variant in nine patients in the last month.
– Therefore, we cannot rule out that the variant also exists in Norway, although through our monitoring we have not seen viruses with exactly this combination of changes so far, says Vold.
– The virus has changed the attack method.
There is probably no more serious course of disease
She points out that it is completely normal for viruses to change. The coronavirus, which is actually called SARS-CoV-2, is considered relatively stable. But it has still been observed with constantly new varieties with different combinations of changes.
The new combination in the UK appears to have changes that have an impact on infectivity. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Saturday that the new variant could be up to 70 percent more contagious than usual.
– We closely follow developments. Currently, there is nothing to suggest that this virus causes more serious illness than other variants of SARS-CoV-2, says Line Vold.
– The vaccine can be adapted
In the UK, they started vaccination on December 8th and have therefore started the process that Norway will start.
On Christmas Eve the first delivery of vaccines is expected in this country. Three days later, on December 27, the first vaccine is scheduled to be administered in a nursing home in Oslo.
If the new variant appears in Norway, it is not certain that this will necessarily affect vaccination. Line Vold notes that vaccines can be changed to accommodate new mutations.
– New vaccine technology using m-RNA allows vaccines to be changed so that they can target new variants of the virus. So you don’t start from scratch if new variants should appear that current vaccines don’t bite into, he says.
