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Soumya Swaminathan, Chief Scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO), on January 12, 2020 in Geneva.
FABRICE COFFRINI | AFP via Getty Images
Officials from the World Health Organization said Monday that the coronavirus is mutating “at a much slower rate” than seasonal flu, even as UK officials announced this weekend that a new mutation of the virus allows it to spread. more easily.
Seasonal influenza mutates so frequently that scientists have to regularly develop new vaccines to inoculate the population against the virus each year. UK officials have told the WHO that Covid-19 vaccines appear to be just as effective against the new strain, but more research is needed. While all viruses mutate naturally, not all mutations make a virus more contagious or more virulent.
“SARS-CoV-2 is mutating at a much slower rate than influenza,” said WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan at a news conference. “And so far, even though we’ve seen various changes and mutations, none have had a significant impact on the susceptibility of the virus to any of the therapies, drugs or vaccines currently in development, and one hopes that will continue to be the case.” .
WHO officials reiterated that UK officials have said the new variant could be up to 70% more transmissible than the original strain of the virus. Dr Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO health emergencies program, said it was unclear whether the increase in spread in the UK is due to mutation or human behavior.
“We have seen an estimate of a small increase in the number of breeders in the UK,” he said, which means that the virus is spreading faster, which could mean it is more contagious or spreads more easily in the months colder. It could also mean that people are becoming lax in following public health protocols. “It remains to be seen how much of that is due to the specific genetic change in the new variant. I suspect something.”
Maria Van Kerkhove, head of the WHO’s emerging diseases and zoonoses unit, said UK officials estimate the mutation has caused the virus’s reproduction rate to rise from 1.1 to 1.5. That means that each person infected with the variant is estimated to infect 1.5 other people, compared to 1.1 when infected with the original variant.
He added that officials are investigating three elements of the new variant. He said scientists are investigating whether it spreads more easily, whether it causes more or less severe disease, and how the antibody responds to infection. Van Kerkhove and others emphasized that there does not appear to be any impact on the effectiveness of Covid vaccines in the new variant.
