Emergence of new Covid strain ‘not a disaster’ for UK, says government’s scientific adviser

Scientists investigating new variant, which has been linked to 1,108 cases in south and east of England

The emergence of a new coronavirus strain “is not a disaster” for the UK and won’t lead to “a breakdown in all our plans”, a scientific adviser to the government has said.

A total of 1,108 cases related to the variant have been identified, predominantly in the south and east of England, Public Health England (PHE) announced on Monday.

Scientists at the Covid-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) consortium are investigating the new strain, which carries a set of mutations in the spike protein that Sars-CoV-2 uses to attach to human cells.

However, COG-UK said there is currently no evidence to suggest that this variation will have any impact on disease severity, antibody response or vaccine efficacy.

Efforts are underway to confirm whether or not any of the mutations are contributing to increased transmission, as previously stated by health secretary Matt Hancock.

Calum Semple, professor of outbreak medicine at the University of Liverpool and a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), insisted that public should not worry about the new variant.

"People should not be losing sleep about this, they really need to leave the virology to the scientists because we're at the very early stages of understanding what's going on here," he told the BBC on Tuesday.

"What I can say is that coronavirus, like many other viruses, mutate all the time. And without the presence of community immunity – that's because we don't have herd immunity and won't have for many, many months – the virus essentially is free to change and become more comfortable with the humans with which it is living.

"That's what the virus is doing – it is learning how to become slightly better at living with us and becoming slightly more infectious. But that does not mean it's harming us more or causing more severe illness in people."

Prof Semple said it is "the million-dollar question" how the Covid vaccines in development will fare against the new variant, though he insisted he was confident they would remain efficacious.

"Some of the mutations are occurring in the key that the virus uses to unlock the cells,” he said. “And we see this with flu each year and that's why the flu vaccine has to change year on year."

"I would expect the vaccine still to be reasonably effective because it's currently 95 per cent effective. Even if we dropped a few percentage points, it's still going to be good enough, and much better than many other vaccines on the market.

"And the next bit of good news is that the new vaccines are essentially like emails that we send to the immune system, and they're very easy to tweak.

"So if we know that the lock has changed very slightly, we just have to edit that email, change a word or two and then the vaccine that will be ready in six to eight weeks' time after that, will be competent and better targeted to the new strain.

"So this is this is not a disaster. This isn't a breakdown in all our plans. This is just what we expect with a new virus, and it's what the scientists and the doctors have come to understand, and we will adapt."

Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, said the new strain was a reminder “that there is still so much to learn about Covid-19”.

“The speed at which this has been picked up on is also testament to this phenomenal research effort,” he said. “However, there is no room for complacency. We have to remain humble and be prepared to adapt and respond to new and continued challenges as we move into 2021. “

Jonathan Stoye, a virologist at the Francis Crick Institute in London, explained that variants and new strains typically arise in viruses as “a result of errors in copying viral genetic material”. This, he said, led to small changes in virus proteins.