Mutations may be driving surge in infections, scientists say

AS VACCINES are rolling out, Covid-19 is on the move, not merely spreading but also mutating, and possibly becoming more transmissible.

There is no evidence that these changes are making the virus deadlier, but new research has provided evidence that the virus is not a static target of vaccines and will need to be watched closely to see how it responds to therapeutic interventions and the human immune system.

The issue of mutations led to headlines across the UK after a top government official, Health Secretary Matt Hancock, stood in the House of Commons on Monday and announced that more than 1 000 confirmed Covid-19 infections in south-eastern England showed genetic mutations that might be driving the surge in that region.

That news was quickly followed by a statement from Jeremy Farrar, the head of the Wellcome Trust biomedical research foundation, saying “there is evidence to indicate a new variant of the Covid-19 virus” and calling this development “potentially serious”. He said it was unclear whether the variant was responsible for the spike in infections in parts of the UK, or what this may or may not mean for transmission and the efficacy of vaccines.

Scientists who are members of the

UK Covid-19 Genomics Consortium stressed that mutations occur all the time, and that lineages arise and then disappear. The researchers said they first noted the new variant at the end of September and began following its spread, eventually seeing it in samples taken from more than 1 100 people, most of whom lived in the south-east of England. What surprised them was the sudden prevalence of the variant.

“This lineage came up quite rapidly,” said Nick Loman, a professor of microbial genomics at the University of Birmingham. Loman also said the number of mutations was striking. The new variant showed 17 mutations, most in a segment of the virus’s genome that encodes for the spike protein, the protruding structure essential to the pathogen’s ability to bind with the receptor cells in a person who gets exposed and infected.

Loman said there was no proof that this variant was spreading faster. Nor was there any sign that the variant caused more severe illness or was capable of evading a vaccine. He said scientists were bringing the variant into the laboratory to study whether it entered cells more easily.

Sharon Peacock, director of the surveillance consortium and a professor of microbiology at the University of Cambridge, said thousands of mutations in Covid-19 had been identified since it emerged. Peacock said virus strains that suddenly became more dominant needed to be tracked and studied. Covid-19 jumped into humans late last year and may still be evolving as it adapts to the new host.

Experts say it is still unknown whether mutations will make differences in the pandemic. Disease severity has not changed around the planet. Mutations could make the virus less deadly, but to date the decline in mortality among infected people has been attributed entirely to improvements in treatments.