Scientists now fear the British coronavirus variant is deadlier

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson made a disturbing ad Friday about B 1.1.7, the variant of the coronavirus first discovered in the UK last fall and which has spread across the country and elsewhere. According to data recently analyzed by British scientists, B 1.1.7 is not only more transmissible than previous strains, but it may also be more likely to cause death. While these findings are still preliminary, they appear to deserve to be taken seriously.

The announcement was based on data assessed by the UK’s New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group, or NERVTAG, an independent group of scientists who have helped shape the country’s response to the pandemic. Last December, their student work B 1.1.7 solidified the consensus that the variant was more transmissible than previously circulating strains. Initially, their analysis found no evidence that B 1.1.7 was causing more serious illness or death in the population than before. But this is no longer the case.

According to their new paper released Several independent analyzes of case data collected in recent weeks on Friday indicate the same trend – an increase in the number of people dying from B 1.1.7 compared to those infected with other strains of the virus. Although the exact numbers differ between groups, they suggest that B 1.1.7 is about 30% more likely to cause death than previous strains. Note that, while a 30% increase seems huge, the overall death rate would still be somewhere around 1%.

“This is of course quite concerning, given the speed at which this variant has outgrown circulating strains in different regions and our inability to control systemic transmission in many parts of the world,” Jason Kindrachuk, a virologist at the University of Manitoba in Canada who was not involved in the new research, told Gizmodo in an email.

As the authors of the new article underline, there is limits of their discoveries. Data British scientists are using to study coronavirus only covers a small portion of the total number of cases and deaths in the country on any given day. Some data sources, such as inpatient results, also take longer to collect than others. This may explain why the hospitalization data does not seem to specifically show that B.1.1.7 is more lethal – the data may not be up to date enough to find this pattern yet. It is also possible that B.1.1.7 places more people in the hospital but not necessarily change the chances of survival of an inpatient.

A possible factor that could indirectly explain why B.1.1.7 seems more deadly—Hospitals being overwhelmed by more cases caused by a more transmissible variant – do not appear to play a major role, however. An analysis, performed by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, considered “hospital pressure covariates” such as the number of hospital beds available to patients on a given day. fan but found no substantial change in their findings. The increase in death rates was constant across different age groups, also, further suggesting a higher real risk of mortality from B.1.1.7 alone.

Sall countries are now worried about the emergence of B.1.1.7 and others, similar variants. Should B.1.1.7 move outside the UK?, as some experts have warned, it would certainly threaten to unravel the recent decline in recent cases and hospitalizations seen in some countries.

“My immediate thoughts, of course, has come at the cost of this disease over our long-residents of long-term care facilities in Canada and what that variant might mean for an already precarious situation, ”Kindrachuk said. Canada, like the United States, is newly experience a decrease in cases and hospitalizations. But epidemics variants similar to B 1.1.7 have already been found in local nursing homes.

There is still work to be done to confirm these results. But whatever the conclusions, it remains absolutely essential that we do what we can to reduce the spread of the pandemic so quickly. as possible – including wearing masks, avoiding socializing indoors when possible, aand get vaccinated when you become eligible.