Spanish farm workers’ virus ‘ accounts for most UK cases’

A CORONAVIRUS variant that originated in Spanish farm workers has spread rapidly throughout Europe and now accounts for most UK cases, a new study suggests.

The variant, called 20A. EU1, is known to have spread from farm workers to local populations in Spain in June and July, with people then returning from holiday in Spain most likely playing a key role in spreading the strain across Europe.

However, experts behind the study, which has not yet been peer- reviewed in a medical journal, said there is currently no evidence that the strain spreads faster than other strains of coronavirus.

There is also no suggestion that the strain causes more severe disease, or would affect how a vaccine works.

Dr Emma Hodcroft, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Basel and lead author of the study, told BBC Radio 4’ s Today programme: “We know there was a super- spreading event among agricultural workers in Spain, that then the virus was able to jump into the local population and start moving more generally around Spain. This happened in kind of June and July, right when travel was picking up again in Europe, and of course Spain’s a wonderful holiday destination and many people headed there.

“What we think happened is that rising of cases in Spain combined with that increase in holiday travel allowed the virus to move to many different countries across Europe and, when it got there, it was able to spread quite successfully.”

Dr Hodcroft said it was the movement of people that had allowed the variant to spread, rather than any suggestion that the strain was particularly powerful or dangerous.

“That’s definitely what we think,” she said, adding that there were failures in the travel system which enabled it to spread.

“We are in the process of working with labs to more closely inspect the mutations, but we actually think that it’s really behaviour here that was the key point, and a few failures in the travel system over the summer that we really hope that we can learn from in the future.”