How worried should we be about ‘Botswana variant’?
BRITISH health officials say there is not yet enough evidence to classify the new strain as a ‘variant of concern’ – but they are clearly worried.
One senior expert from the UK Health Security Agency warned last night that it is ‘the worst variant we have seen so far’ and represents a ‘dramatic change’ from anything seen previously.
It contains about 30 mutations – twice as many as in the Delta variant which is currently causing most infections.
The mutations in the ‘Botswana variant’, officially called B.1.1.529, include those found in all the variants seen so far, plus new ones. These are linked to increased transmissibility, increased infectivity and increased viral load.
Experts believe the new variant is likely to evade existing immune responses, both from prior infection and from vaccination. And it may even be better at evading vaccines than the Beta variant.
Officials admit one of their ‘major worries’ is that the spike found in the Botswana variant is so ‘dramatically different’ to the one in the original Wuhan strain, which was used to produce the jabs.
There are also fears that antibody treatments, such as Ronapreve, which are designed to target particular parts of the virus may not work so well.
Protein experts and virologists advising the Government are all said to be ‘extremely concerned’.
However, there is nothing to suggest that lateral flow and PCR tests will not detect the virus. And some labs will even be able to identify likely cases of the new strain without the need for genomic testing.
The most concerning Covid variants are named after the Greek alphabet and the latest one could be named ‘Nu’.