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Britain reported 57,725 new corona infections on Saturday, a new negative record, the fifth in a row. For comparison: a week earlier, 35,691 corona infections had been recorded on the island. The reason for the huge increase is the B117 variant of mutated Corona.
Scientists assume that this is about 50 percent more contagious than the previously known Sars-CoV-2. Maybe more. One consequence of this dominance: the old corona virus is being suppressed. Instead of the original virus, people are infected with the new variant.
British epidemiologist Deepti Gurasani reports that in many parts of Britain B117 is already more present than the original virus.
This development should soon continue on the European continent, as the Swiss virologist Isabella Eckerle writes on Twitter (40).
Exponential growth is devastating
It doesn’t seem like more people are getting sick or dying from the new variant. Vaccines against it should also be as effective as against the well-known coronavirus.
But that’s it with the good news. From a purely mathematical point of view, it is devastating when the infection rate is actually 50 percent higher and the virus can spread as before. With a prevalence rate of 1.1 (meaning one person infects another) and a mortality rate of 0.8 percent (0.8 percent of all corona infections are fatal), the coronavirus out of 10,000 infected people up to the date would be 129 in a month People die. With the mutation, the same number of infected people would have 978 deaths a month after the outbreak, calculates the mathematician and epidemiologist Adam Kucharski.
More infected people also mean more hospitalizations, more isolation, more absenteeism. This in health and economic systems that take months to attack. In short: the R-value, which experts have been talking about for months, is still the decisive criterion to defeat Corona. If the value remains below 1, as has been the case in Switzerland in some cases in recent weeks, the number of infections will decrease and everything can be more easily controlled. If the number rises above 1, the opposite happens.
If the less contagious version of the virus could now be kept at R = 1 with the above measurements, this means that this is no longer sufficient for B117 (and any other more contagious mutation). The federal government has already reacted by initiating an entry ban and retroactive quarantine for people from Britain and South Africa, where another mutation is common, on December 21. Images of angry Britons having to interrupt their skiing holidays have dominated the headlines in recent days.
Corona update in Switzerland: South African mutation in Ticino and dead child in SG(01:04)
The Federal Council does not listen to experts
But these measures are not enough for scientists. Isabella Eckerle says that despite vaccines, she runs the risk of a new uncontrollable wave that she could prevent if she immediately limits the number of cases through new measures while increasing the vaccination rate.
Martin Ackermann, (49), head of the Swiss Corona Task Force, sounds similar. A few days ago, he advocated fighting B117 with extensive measures. The start of school will be postponed and the central office will be implemented more consistently.
Scientists never tire of emphasizing that there is still very little rigorous testing in Switzerland. To control virus mutations, it would also make sense to carry out so-called backtracking, that is, trying to find out where a person is infected. Testing at the airport could be another way to expand the system.
The Federal Council knows the arguments of the experts, but does not want to toughen the measures for the moment. On December 30, he announced that he would continue on the path he had taken without pressing again.
Yesterday the canton of Bern reported that a student (9) living in London who had traveled to Switzerland with his mother for the Christmas holidays had tested positive for the new variant Crown of Great Britain. It is the sixth case of B117 in Switzerland.
