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Thousands of cases of the most infectious variant of the coronavirus have been detected in the UK, according to the scientists, who said it had clearly spread beyond areas under the most severe level 4 restrictions.
The latest genetic surveillance suggests that the new strain spread rapidly from Kent and London in late September and reached the South West, the Midlands and the North of England, although London, the South East and the East of England are still by far the most affected regions.
“It is certainly not the case that this is completely geographically limited in what the current level 4 area is,” said Dr. Jeffrey Barrett, a statistical geneticist working on Covid-19 at the Wellcome Trust’s Sanger Institute near Cambridge.
Professor Tom Connor, a consultant bioinformatician at Cardiff University, said that genetic sequencing had detected the new variant, called B117, in North and South Wales based on its spread across the country. “The sequence data clearly shows that there are cases across the UK,” he said.
Geneticists monitoring the spread and evolution of the virus have collected more than 3,100 B117 sequences from across the country, although some may be duplicated. More than 2,500 have come from positive Covid tests in London, Kent, Essex and Norwich, with the rest scattered across the UK.
There are strong indications that the new hyper-infectious strain of Covid-19 has reached Cumbria, according to the county’s director of public health. Infections in the Eden district, which is just 20 miles from the Scottish border, have “skyrocketed,” according to Colin Cox, director of public health.
He said he suspected the new variant was involved, due to the “very, very high hit rate.” Eden, which includes the market town of Penrith, had experienced workplace outbreaks in which 50% of staff had been infected, “despite having good Covid controls,” he said.
Cumbria is at level 2, the second lowest level of restrictions. Some areas of the county, like Copeland in the west, still have one of the lowest infection rates in England.
Cox said that it has not yet been confirmed that Eden’s outbreaks were definitely caused by the new strain and that it had not yet been tested by full genomic typing. But a particular biochemical marker had appeared in the new shoots that was “at least highly suggestive of being the new variant,” he said.
“We have a couple of outbreaks in workplaces with more than 100 people in them, where almost half are getting infected. We have seen big outbreaks in schools, ”Cox said. “Wherever we are seeing outbreaks, we are seeing them affecting a large proportion of the people who may have been exposed.”
He said it was concerning “not because the new variant is more dangerous, but because it spreads faster, so it is more likely to reach more people. And so, yes, it is a concern. But I think, given the increase in transmissibility that we see in these new variants, it is probably everywhere pretty quickly. I don’t think there are many places that are going to resist. “
Despite his concerns, Cox didn’t think Cumbria should be moved up a notch before Christmas.
“Our rates are very varied at the moment. And Copeland has, if not the lowest, one of the lowest rates in the country, “he said.
“Most places in Cumbria are comfortable on level 2. And I guess the real question would be, what value would it be to put it on level 3 right now and then relax on Christmas day, and then it feels like it would not be that far from another national intervention. just changing all the rules so quickly, I think it would make less sense. “
Health officials in Lancashire said they believed the new variant was behind a sudden spike in the number of infections in the county, which has been under the strictest level of coronavirus restrictions since October.
Angie Ridgwell, president of the Lancashire Resilience Forum, urged people who had traveled to the region from a Level 4 area to stay home and not mix with other homes over the Christmas period.
Lancashire director of public health Dr Sakthi Karunanithi said the county believed the variant was behind a “significant upward shift” in the infection rate among all age groups, although this had yet to be confirmed. by genomic analysis.
He said: “One sign of the presence of the new variant is a sudden change in the increase in the number of new cases and we are starting to see that in many parts of Lancashire. It is happening in all age groups.
“What we’ve seen is an increase since we came out of the national lockdown at level 3. After a few days, we started to see a shift, and in some districts, a significant shift, upward in many age groups.”
