Other Covid variants in UK ‘won’t dominate’
ENGLAND’S deputy chief medical officer said he didn’t think variants such as the South African or Bristol variant would become dominant in the UK.
The New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG) said on Tuesday that the mutation first identified in Bristol is now classified as a “variant of concern.”
But Professor Jonathan Van-Tam used one of his characteristic analogies to explain why he did not believe other variants would become dominant in the UK.
He said the UK Kent variant accounts for more than 90% of cases in this country and there have been fewer than 200 cases of the South African strain.
“If you are running a bath and you have got the hot water tap on and you add in a very small amount of cold water, so the cold tap is running as well but at really a very low volume, your bath water is basically going to remain hot,” he said.
“It’s only if that cold tap was gushing much more than the hot tap, the cold water would take over.
“That’s probably the best analogy I can give you at the moment. There are no signs that South African variant is running at that speed at the moment and therefore I don’t frame it as something that is going to be a dominant issue in the next few months.”
Prof Van-Tam was speaking during a Q&A session on the BBC.
He also said that the virus does not discriminate or “care about the colour of your skin”.
He said: “I have concerns that uptake in the minority ethnic groups is not going to be as rapid or as high as in the indigenous white population of the UK.
“And this really concerns me because the big message I have for everyone listening is that this virus just doesn’t care what ethnic background you’re from.
“It just doesn’t care about the colour of your skin or where you live in the world or any of these things, it just cares that you’re a human being, that you don’t have immunity and that you’re susceptible.
“And this is really worrying, it’s a massive concern to people who are older and people who have higher risk conditions. The virus does not discriminate.”
He insisted that vaccines were safe for black, Asian and minority ethnic communities, saying that with more than 12 million vaccines administered across the UK “we’re getting to a point where, if we were going to see any kind of safety signal, it would be pretty obvious by now”.
He said polling showed that “vaccine confidence is generally really high in the UK compared to many parts of the world, and the enthusiasm and likelihood that people are going to accept Covid-19 vaccines when called is super-high”.
He said the vast majority of people would prefer to take their vaccine advice from trusted sources rather than “some of the nonsense that is circulated on social media”.
Prof Van-Tam added: “If my central heating system breaks down I’m going to call a heating engineer to explain to me what’s wrong and what needs to be fixed... I’m not going to ask a brain surgeon.
“So why would you go to those kind of sources of information when you have really readily accessible good sources from trusted voices in the NHS? Your own health professionals that you know and see periodically throughout your life?”