Mutated virus ‘may be 30% more lethal’
THE Covid variant identified in the UK is 30 to 70 per cent more transmissible – and possibly around 30 per cent more deadly.
Sir Patrick Vallance, the Government’s chief scientific adviser, said yesterday that research indicated current vaccines will still protect people from the latest mutation, but the Brazilian and South African variants are more worrying. Sir Patrick, below, said hospital figures had not shown any difference in the death risk for patients with the UK variant. But he warned: “When data are looked at in terms of anyone who’s tested positive, there is evidence that there’s an increased risk for those who have the new variant.
“If you took a man in their 60s, the average risk is that for 1,000 people who got infected, roughly 10 would be expected to unfortunately die with the [old] virus. With the new variant, for 1,000 people infected, roughly 13 or 14 people might be expected to die.”
Sir Patrick said a similar relative increase in risk would be seen across all age groups, but there was “a lot of uncertainty around these numbers”. He added: “It obviously is of concern that this has an increase in mortality as well as transmissibility, as it appears of today.” Meanwhile, laboratory studies have suggested vaccines will still work against the latest variant.
But experts are more concerned about variants emerging in Brazil and South Africa. Sir Patrick said: “We know less about how much more transmissible they are.
“We are more concerned that they have certain features which mean they might be less susceptible to vaccines. They are definitely of more concern than the one in the UK at the moment and we need to keep looking at it and studying this very carefully.”
During a call with travel sector chiefs yesterday, Health Secretary Matt Hancock suggested the South African variant could blunt vaccine effectiveness by as much as 50 per cent.
But Sir Patrick said the true effect will not be known until more people were vaccinated.
He said: “Taking a result from a laboratory and saying, ‘Therefore the vaccine will be 50 per cent less effective’, you just can’t do it.
“We’re going to see different results coming up on all of these. Ultimately it’s going to be clinical data that’s going to tell us.”
Experts were also asked if delaying second doses for up to 12 weeks would raise the risk of mutations.
Sir Patrick said: “The more the virus is replicating and transmitting between people, the more likely the chance that it will get a mutation and alter.”
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