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American medical personnel visiting a COVID-19 patient – Photo: The Atlantic
Ms Zeynep Tufekci, a professor at the University of North Carolina (USA), called the variant of the B117 crown a “time bomb on countdown”, a great danger to human society.
Write in the newspaper The AtlanticProfessor Tufekci explains that the virus is always mutated, often with little change in function, but B117 with more contagious properties than the original strain is dangerous, not to mention its resistance to the vaccine or its virulence. .
Many other experts share the same point of view. Professor Adam Kucharski, epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (UK), explains with an example:
There are 2 scenarios, one is that the virus increases virulence by 50%, the other is that the virus increases infectivity by 50%. In both cases, the infectious coefficient is 1.1 (1 patient infects another 1.1 people) and the risk of death is 0.8%.
Next, imagine there were 10,000 COVID-19 infections at the same time, a fairly realistic figure for many European cities today.
With the above parameters, about 129 people normally die each month. In the scenario where the virus increases by 50%, the number of deaths will be 193. In the scenario where the probability of infection increases by 50%, the number of deaths will skyrocket to 987!
Increased transmissibility helps the virus to explode very quickly. Each infected person can infect many others exponentially, while the severity / mildness of the disease (i.e., virulence) affects only each patient.
B117 has not been found to increase virulence – good news for COVID-19 patients – but its contagion poses an even greater threat to society.
In other words, the death rate did not change, but with a large number of people infected, the loss was even more dire than otherwise.
The possibility of the mutant corona virus being more contagious is bad news amid the pandemic – Photo: The Atlantic
Professor Tufekci admits that she herself initially did not notice the new variant amid a forest of grim daily news, but now the scientific data is more comprehensive and she believes this is the real concern.
Trevor Bedford, scientist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (USA), noted that the number of cases of the B117 variant is increasing rapidly among the UK population, in particular the rate of secondary attacks (number of infected persons from an identified case) of this variant was also greater than the original strain.
Furthermore, although this has not been confirmed, the new variant appears to produce a higher than normal viral load in the patient’s body.
According to Professor Tufekci, there are many possible causes for a variant of the virus to become popular, fortunately it also played a role, but current evidence suggests that there is only one simple explanation that “the virus is more contagious.” it is solid.
How much more contagious? This is the problem the researchers were looking for; initial data suggested the number ranged from 50 to 70 percent. Worse still, no one knows what mechanism causes the virus to change in this way, even though a large number of mutant genes are believed to be involved.
“The ambiguity in the B117 also means that we don’t know how effective anti-epidemic measures like masks are, between distances … they are more effective than ever, we just have to be more careful.
We are in a race. Unfortunately, the virus suddenly has the ability to run when we are near the finish line (thanks to the vaccine), ”commented Professor Tufekci.
