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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Sunday that the newly discovered virus could be up to 70 percent more contagious than other variants.
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.
Deputy Health Director Espen Nakstad believes that we will soon find out how contagious the new virus is.
Photo: Berit Roald / NTB
A supposition
Those who concluded that the virus was most contagious are 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.
– 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 Pert Horby.
Horby doesn’t comment on how they came up with the exact 70 percent figure.
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 virus is being used as one of the arguments. That growth is used can be explained as follows:
At time A, 100 people are infected in the population and they are infected by two different viruses 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. There 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 same group that is causing 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 hitherto 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.
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 mutations that we have not seen in the pandemic so far.
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.
It is especially one of the mutations that is noted. It is the one that has caused a 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.
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 virus means for the spread number R. As is well known, the number of people who get infected by an infected person is on average.
By nature, the virus has an R of perhaps 3. 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.
Boris Johnson is testing virus samples. In such PCR tests, samples are subjected to many joints with amplification. A sample that needs many joints generally contains little virus.
Photo: Pool / Reuters
Also more viruses
Nerve tag comes with one more 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.
This, in turn, may be an indication that the virus is more likely to spread to an infected human.
