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We still don’t know much about the variant of the virus that is now causing many countries around the world to introduce stops for UK travelers. What we do know is that this variant of the sars-cov2 virus was discovered in September and appears to have originated somewhere in London or Kent. We also know that in early November less than a third of those infected in London carried it and in recent weeks it has accounted for more than 60 percent of cases there.
It is this increase in the proportion of cases that has caused researchers to react. But in the midst of an ongoing pandemic with a new virus, there are few unequivocal and definitive answers. We are, as I wrote in early summer, in the middle of the science workshop, and here the map can be redrawn every day. The fact that more infected people are carriers of a variant of the virus does not necessarily mean that the variant is more contagious. It can also be due to coincidences. When another variant of the virus, B.1.177, which is now the most common virus variant in Sweden according to the Swedish Public Health Agency, spread rapidly from Spain to the rest of Europe in early fall, it does not appear to be because B.1.177 is more contagious. Instead, many brought the variant back to their home countries after celebrating the holidays in Spain.
But there are good reasons to think that the new English variant is more contagious. 17 mutations in the virus genome appear to have occurred simultaneously, and several of them affect the surface protein, the tiny spines of the coronavirus, which bind to receptors on the cell surface so the virus can enter our cells . The same mutations are also found in a variant of the virus that is now spreading rapidly in South Africa. But the virus strain does not appear to be associated with the English variant. The same mutations can occur anywhere, when the virus spreads and adapts to new environments, in newly infected individuals.
There is still no indication that the variant causes worse or milder disease, more or fewer deaths. It is possible that, sadly, the future will show.
Little changes in the virus genome it arises all the time when the virus makes copies of itself and is transmitted from one person to another. Researchers are mapping the virus genome in infected people to build family trees that show how the virus spreads and develops. Thanks to that, English researchers were able to see how the virus variant took over, and thanks to that we also know that The variant is now available in Denmark and Australia as well, and probably got there with travelers from the UK..
The variant has not yet been discovered in Sweden. But here only virus samples are mapped, and the conclusions we can draw depend, of course, on how many and representative the samples are.
Therefore, it is important to map the genome of the virus. But most important of all is preventing the spread of the infection. The more opportunities the virus has to spread, the more opportunities it has to change. And it may become more contagious, more dangerous, and even more deadly.
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