Speaking on the Andrew Marr Show on BBC television, Susan Hopkins of Public Health England (PHE) said: “We have not got enough data about this variant yet to be able to clarify whether it’s a variant of concern. We have put it as a variant under investigation.”
“To escalate it up the ranking we need to know that it’s increased transmissibility, increased severity, or vaccine-evading, and we just don’t have that yet, but we’re looking at the data on a daily basis.” A total of 77 cases of the variant have now been identified in the UK, with 73 reported in England and four in Scotland.
There are also concerns over Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s trip to India later this month, however, Dr. Hopkins said it’s too soon to decide if India should be put on the government’s travel “red list.” The UK’s environment minister, George Eustice said the trip should go ahead despite rising cases in the country.
“It is important that business and the business of politics, if you like, does continue,” he said, adding that an expert committee periodically reviews decisions about whether to permit travel to certain countries, reports Reuters.
The Indian variant
The new variant was first detected in India in March, but has since been found elsewhere, including California.
The Indian variant – known as B.1.617 – is rather worrisome to epidemiologists because it contains two mutations in the spike protein that, it has been suggested, may boost its ability to escape the body’s immune responses.
An analysis of the samples collected from India’s western Maharashtra state in March showed “an increase in the fraction of samples with the E484Q and L452R mutations” compared with December last year. “Such [double] mutations confer immune escape and increased infectivity,” said the health ministry.
Interestingly, with cases surging across the world, most have been attributed to the UK variant, or B.1.1.7. The UK variant is causing around 40 percent of cases in Asia, according to the pathogen-tracking project Nextstrain. Another 16 percent of cases are due to the B.1.351 variant that evolved in South Africa.
India’s case numbers are currently the highest in the world, although it is not clear whether the B.1.617 variant is helping to fuel the surge. But Professor Paul Hunter, a professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia, said the arrival of the India variant in the UK was potentially worrying.
“These two escape mutations working together could be a lot more problematic than the South African and Brazilian variants who have only got one escape mutation,” he said. “It might be even less controlled by vaccine than the Brazilian and South African variants.”
