High Likelihood of British Variant of Virus Spreading More Easily – NRK Urix – Foreign News & Documentaries



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On Sunday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson claimed that the newly discovered variant of the virus could be up to 70 percent more contagious than other coronaviruses.

This is a number that has not been tested. The Prime Minister said that he had received this figure from his scientific advisers.

– It is not yet known how much more contagious the new variant of the virus is. We hope to learn more about this in the coming days, says Deputy Health Director Espen Nakstad.

Press conference with the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Health

Health Deputy Director Espen Nakstad believes we will soon find out just how contagious the new variant is.

Photo: Berit Roald / NTB

A supposition

The conclusion that the virus was more contagious came from a separate advisory group in the UK. The group is called the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threat Advisory Group. The abbreviation is Nervtag, which may fit better in the mouth.

Now they say on Monday that they are very confident that the virus is more contagious than previous variants. On Sunday they said they were moderately confident.

– The conclusion that the virus is most contagious is based on a number of data sources that coincide and form a whole, says Nervtag leader Professor Peter Horby.

Horby doesn’t comment on how they got to the 70 percent figure.

Daily press conference on COVID-19 in London

Nervtag leader Peter W Horby does not comment directly on the 70 percent figure. In the last two days, he has forwarded a message from the World Health Organization, which in short is: if you don’t act, and act quickly, then the virus wins.

Photo: Pippa Fowles / 10 Downing St / Reuters

The main reason

There has been a report from the meeting where the additional infectivity was discussed. It appears that the assumption of additional infectivity is based on several factors. The growth of this particular variant is used as one of the arguments. What is the growth that is used can be explained as follows:

At time A, one hundred are infected in a population and are infected by two different virus variants that are evenly distributed. That is, 50 infected with variant 1 and 50 infected with variant 2. At time B, there are 1,000 infected. Now 900 has variant 1 and one hundred has variant 2. This is a clear indication that there may be something special about variant 1.

Math teacher Oliver Johnson has looked at Nervtag on the cards and concludes that the growth description is correct.

Do not be like that

Just because the numbers are correct does not necessarily mean that there is evidence that the new virus is more contagious. To further corroborate this, experts use a different argument.

It is well known that matches can determine whether a particular variant of a virus becomes dominant in an infectious situation. It may be, for example, that the own group of people carrying the infection in the population at this time has this variant of the virus.

This argument is mainly valid when the spread of the infection is relatively low. This is not the case in the UK now.

“It is much more difficult for a previously unknown virus variant to explode when the pandemic is as active as it is now in the UK,” researcher Jeffrey Barrett wrote on Twitter. He leads the covid-19 genome project and is a statistician.

When there is a lot of infection, development is less controlled by coincidences.

The virus itself has changed

The fact that the virus is particularly contagious is also made likely by the changes that the virus has. What has emerged in the UK is very different from previously known viruses. The virus has combinations of changes that we have not seen in the pandemic until now.

You have 17 changes that are not present in your closest known relative. At least three of these changes are associated with increased infectivity.

Here you can find a good overview of the most important changes in the virus.

Professor Carlos del Río of Emory School of Medicine is one of many who have listed these three and believe they indicate increased infectivity.

There is one particular mutation that is noted. It is the one that has caused a physical change in the contact point between the virus and the cells in humans. Among other things, animal experiments show that this change leads to increased infectivity.

R-high

The R number determines how many people an infected person transmits. If a virus is highly contagious, it may have a high R number.

Graphics: Tuva Tagseth / NRK

Affects R number

Nervtag has also studied what the documented spread of the new variant means for the spread number R. The R is known as the number of people infected by one infected person on average.

By nature, the virus has an R of perhaps 4. If it becomes more contagious, this number will increase.

Nervtag found that the R of this version of the virus had increased between 0.39 and 0.93.

This will make the virus more contagious.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson visits Porton Down Science Park near Salisbury

Boris Johnson is testing virus samples. These PCR tests can also give an estimate of the amount of virus in the sample. Data from large amounts of such tests are now being used to substantiate the claim that the new variant is more contagious.

Photo: Pool / Reuters

Also more viruses

The Nerve label comes with a data point that they believe supports the claim of increased infectivity. They report that patients with the new variant appear to have significantly more virus in their body.

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