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Several European countries have banned travel to the United Kingdom in recent hours over fears of a new variant of the coronavirus detected there.
But what is a variant of the coronavirus?
Just like humans have DNA, the coronavirus also has its genetic material. In the case of the virus, it is called RNA.
This genetic material is the “instruction manual” for the virus to reproduce.
Coronavirus RNA is made up of 30,000 letters. It starts like this (in this case translated to DNA):
… and so on until all 30,000 letters are completed.
By multiplying, the virus sometimes makes a mistake and changes one letter for another. For example: replace a letter “g” with a letter “u”. The other 29,999 letters remain the same, there is only one letter difference. This is called a mutation.
The new virus with this mutation will be a little different to the old virus.
Mutations can build up and will appear “varieties” virus that will be more than one letter different from the original virus.
Is the new variant detected in the UK the first variant of the virus we have detected?
No. Since the start of the pandemic, we have detected variants of the virus.
But how to detect a new variant of the virus?
Imagine that a person tests positive for covid. We can take a sample and “read the letters of your virus”. (In technical terms, “reading the letters of the virus” is called “sequencing the virus”.)
If a letter is different, we have found a mutation.
The different mutations accumulate, and so we can build the “Family tree” of the virus. The main branches of this tree are the “virus variants”.
Look at the following image. Each dot represents the virus from a different patient. Each color represents the continent where this sample was taken.
Source: https://nextstrain.org/
Are there the same variants of the virus in all countries?
Not necessarily. In some countries some varieties of the virus are circulating more and in other countries other varieties of the virus are circulating more.
How often do new variants of the virus appear?
All viruses live as mutants: it is normal for new variants of the virus to appear.
In fact, compared to other viruses that we know of, this one mutates quite slowly. About two mutations occur each month.
It is already clear what a variant of the virus is. What about the new variant in the UK? Why is this worrying?
In September 2020, for the first time in the UK, a new line of the virus called “Lineage B.1.1.7”.
This new variant of the virus surprised scientists because it accumulates more mutations than the other variants of the virus which are in the same “genealogical branch”:
Source: https://virological.org/t/preliminary-genomic-characterisation-of-an-emergent-sars-cov-2-lineage-in-the-uk-defined-by-a-novel-set-of- spike-mutations / 563
How would this new variant fit into the “family tree” of the virus taught earlier?
In the virus family tree, this new variant of the virus would be what is left in the black square.
Source: ECDC
Is this variant of the virus more dangerous than others?
There is no definitive answer to this question yet, but it shouldn’t necessarily be more dangerous. Other variants of the virus discovered earlier do not cause more serious illness.
And is this variant of the virus more contagious?
This is of more concern to researchers.
You can see it very well in the following figure: the bars represent the percentage of people who tested positive in the PCR carried out by one of the testing centers in the UK.
Orange bars represent the percentage of people who test positive and have the new variant of the virus. Blue bars are people who test positive and have different variants of the virus.
By early September, only a very small percentage of positive patients in the UK had been infected with the new variant of the virus. However, now in December the majority of positives in the UK have been infected with this strain of the virus.
The new variant of the virus grows faster than the “old” variants of the virus. This can have two explanations:
- The new variant is more contagious.
- The new variant is NOT more contagious, but it is the dominant variant in areas with more social contact (e.g. London) and therefore grows faster than others.
This is a question to be aware of.
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