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It was at a press conference on December 19 that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson revealed that a new mutation of the coronavirus was spreading in South London. True, the mutation had been known since September, but now Johnson’s Health Minister Matt Hancock has come out and said the new variant was up to 70% more contagious than the old one.
The day after found Karin Tegmark Wisell of the Public Health Agency said the new mutation has yet to be discovered in Sweden. But it would come. Today Saturday, the first case was reported in Södermanland.
The news of the new and most contagious mutation has had major consequences around the world. Countries have closed for entry from the UK, as has Sweden, which introduced an entry ban on December 21.
Niklas Arnberg, teacher in virology at Umeå University and president of the Swedish Society for Virology, believes, however, that we should not worry about the new mutation. New mutations are likely to occur every week, perhaps even every day.
– It may sound nasty with a mutation, but it is a completely natural part of how a virus behaves. When it comes to the seasonal flu virus, it mutates so much that everyone has to get vaccinated every year to protect themselves.
Niklas Arnberg says he was surprised when Boris Johnson referred to his health minister, who said the new mutation could be up to 70 percent more contagious.
– When I spoke with colleagues here in Sweden and in other countries, so far no one has managed to confirm that the virus is much more contagious than any other variant that is out at the moment, he says.
So what Boris Johnson and his health minister agreed to at the press conference may not have been as stable and secure as it seemed?
– No. And see what consequences it can have. Many of us, at the beginning of the pandemic, thought that we would apply some kind of precautionary principle and stop flights from China and then flights from Italy when the virus reached Europe. This was also my spontaneous reaction when I heard Boris Johnson speak and refer to his Minister of Health. Because 70 percent is much more contagious. But now that I’ve read and talked to colleagues, I realize that simulations alone are the basis for it being up to 70 percent more contagious. In my opinion, that is an insufficient basis for making such a claim, which now seems to have become true.
Britain’s Health Minister Matt Hancock.
Photo: Kirsty Wigglesworth / AFP
So shouldn’t we claim that it’s an absolute truth?
– If we have learned anything during this pandemic, it is that forecasts, models, scenarios and simulations are often completely wrong. Unfortunately. One would like it to be more precise.
Does anyone know how contagious the new mutation is?
– I do not think so. To study this, animal studies are required where the infectivity of the new virus is compared with one of the others.
Niklas Arnberg believes that much is still unknown about how this mutation actually behaves.
– Many have been infected in South London, but it is natural for a mutant to emerge somewhere that does not have to be more contagious but, by chance, is still more infected. It is completely natural. I don’t think we should be too worried that it is much worse than it already is in Sweden due to this mutation at the moment. We don’t know yet if it is more contagious.
– For example, it may be some super diffusers and chance that has made this particular variant take hold.
The BBC also notes that it is difficult to know what is due to the possible infectivity of the virus and what is caused by the way people have moved.
– It’s still too early to tell … but from what we’ve seen so far, it’s spreading very fast, Dr. Erik Volz said in a presentation last week.
According to Niklas Arnberg, the coronavirus has there are no conditions to mutate much. This is because of how it is structured:
– The virus has a relatively large genome to be the so-called RNA virus. If it mutated as much as the flu virus, it would mutate “to death.” If there are too many mutations, there will also be too many errors. Therefore, the coronavirus has a mechanism that slows it down. But everything that has genetic material mutates, it is part of evolutionary biology.
If, after all, there are mutations that turn out to be negative for humans, the production of, for example, the new RNA-based vaccines can be changed fairly quickly so that they also act against new variants, says Niklas Arnberg.
