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The new mutant variant of the ‘super’ coronavirus is in fact more infectious than previous variants, just as scientists feared, a new study finds.
Researchers at Imperial College London found that the new variant that has wreaked havoc in the UK and made its way to the UK may be nearly 50 percent more transmittable, based on samples taken from nearly 86,000 Britons.
It may not sound like much more, but each infected person currently leads to 1.15 more infections in the US, according to RT.live’s daily calculations.
With more than 186,000 people infected in a single day on average in the U.S., the 48 percent higher transmissibility rate of 1.85 could drive new infections per day beyond 275,000.
It could spell disaster for hospitals in hotspots like California, where some healthcare systems and regions no longer have ICU beds, in states of ‘internal disaster’ and rationing of care.
In a pre-printed study published yesterday that has not yet been peer-reviewed, they determined that the ‘R’ number for the new B117 variant is between 0.4 and 0.7 points higher than other variants.
And it seems to spread more frequently and quickly among people in their 20s.
The graphs from the new study show how, over eight weeks, the new variant became increasingly common (higher points on each graph) in the UK and became more transmissible (the rightmost points on each graph show numbers Increasing R or transmission rates
The ‘R’ number of a virus describes the average number of additional cases each infection leads to.
According to this measure of transmissibility, the R number in the US ranges from about 0.86 in Alaska to 1.23 in Maine, which has become a hotspot this week.
In the UK, the R number is estimated to be between 1.1 and 1.3.
The new variant was first spotted there in September, but starting last month it skyrocketed and led to a surge in infections among the British.
Researchers at Imperial College London sequenced the genomes of 1,904 people infected with the new variant and compared how quickly the virus spread to a larger sample of other samples taken from more than 48,000 people in England.
As they expected, they found that the new virus did indeed have a ‘selective advantage over the SARS-CoV-2 variants circulating in England’, they wrote in the print published online Thursday.
The variant was also disproportionately common among people in their 20s and those living in the south east and east of England and London.
The new study findings mean that each person who contracts this mutated virus will pass it on to up to 0.7 more people on average.
So far, there is no evidence to suggest that the new variant causes more serious disease or is more fatal.
It is encouraging that virologists and public health experts believe that vaccines made by companies such as AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Moderna will continue to be effective against the new variant of the coronavirus.
But the new variant heats up the race between the spread of the virus and vaccination campaigns in the UK, the US, where the new variant has now been found in Colorado, California and Florida, and at least 31 other countries where the most infectious form of coronavirus has been detected.
America’s vaccination program, so far, is a disaster.
Over the course of six weeks, the researchers saw the transmission rate (R) of the new coronavirus variant become higher (orange) than that of other variants, especially in south-east England, eastern England, and London. .
Only 3.17 million Americans had been vaccinated as of Friday, according to a count by Bloomberg News.
The CDC bill puts the number even lower. The agency’s site says its vaccine tracker will be updated every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, but at the time of publication, the tool showed Wednesday’s figures, with 2.79 million people vaccinated.
Bloomberg’s highest estimate means that Operation Warp Speed has vaccinated just 16 percent of the 20 million Americans it promised to inoculate before the end of the year.
At this rate, it would take nearly a decade to vaccinate all adult members of the US population of 331 million people.
And many Americans remain undecided about receiving a vaccine, even when one is available. About 60 percent of nursing home workers in Ohio said they would refuse a vaccine.
Slow and dysfunctional vaccine delivery and Americans’ distrust of injections could jointly provide the B117 variant the opening it needs to spread like wildfire across the country, infecting millions beyond the 20 million people already have had the infection in the US and killing thousands.
