Shape-changing virus threatens disease cycles and lockouts

The new variants pose two threats. First, to counter the increased risk of infection, restrictions on activity could be tightened, pushing some economies back into recession. Britain, where a fast-spreading variant is now prevalent, returned to a full lockdown on January 5. Its economy, which shrank 10% last year, is probably contracting now. The International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday it would rise 4.5% this year, down from its October forecast of 5.9%.

The second threat is a possible new variant resistant to the immunity conferred by existing vaccines and past infections, which could trigger a new round of restrictions and require a new round of vaccinations.

If such a variant emerges, manufacturers believe vaccines can be updated relatively quickly. Nonetheless, James Stock, an economist at Harvard University who has studied the virus and economics, warned of a “scenario of this thing that would persist for a much longer period.”

“All the economic adaptations were considered temporary: restaurants at 25% capacity and so on,” he said. “If this were to become chronic, it would require really massive reorganizations” of the US economy.

Singapore Education Minister Lawrence Wong, who co-chairs his government’s Covid ministerial task force, said on Monday: “It may be four to five years before we finally see the end of the pandemic and the onset of normal post-Covid. ”

Mutations are intrinsic to viruses – and economies, for that matter. Financial crises recur as financial innovation ends up bypassing the regulations put in place after the last crisis. Likewise, viruses mutate all the time, and natural selection dictates that the variants most able to reproduce predominate.

Viruses, however, molt much faster than finance. Almost 300,000 variants of Covid-19 have been detected in the past year, according to an article by Eduardo Costas, professor of genetics at the Complutense University of Madrid, and two colleagues.

To gain a foothold, variants like the UK’s must acquire very beneficial mutations – relatively rare in combination. But as more people around the world become infected, the likelihood of new, highly infectious mutant strains will emerge, Costas said in an email.

“It’s like playing the lottery with a lot more numbers,” he added.

The UK variant, dubbed B.1.1.7, spreads 30% to 70% faster and may be 30% to 40% more deadly than previous variants, scientists say. This implies that non-pharmaceutical interventions such as masks and social distancing must be drastically changed to keep deaths unchanged. It also means that more people need to be infected or vaccinated to gain “herd immunity” when the epidemic ends.

In Britain, estimates David Mackie of JP Morgan, the new variant has increased the number of reproductions of the virus – how many people each infected person will infect, in the absence of immunity or interventions – to 4.9% 3.3. Masks, hygiene and social distancing have pushed the number of reproductions below one, at which point cases are declining. It came at a high cost: the UK economy is almost certainly contracting.

Indeed, as the importance of restrictions on activity to save lives could increase, public tolerance towards them decreases, as shown by the recent riots over a curfew in the Netherlands. In the United States, some states have refused to enact restrictions, and most others only target high-risk activities such as eating indoors.

Yet if the cases reappeared, the restrictions would likely intensify – and even if they didn’t, more people would voluntarily distance themselves. Either would jeopardize the recovery. Goldman Sachs estimates that a delay in achieving collective immunity would delay the US recovery by two months and reduce growth this year by 2 percentage points.

Widespread administration of existing vaccines is expected to quell epidemics associated with current variants. But the likelihood of a vaccine-resistant variant is increasing over time and with cases around the world.

“This is one of the reasons why it is important not to think only locally but globally,” said Alessandro Vespignani, a scientist at the University of the North East who models pandemics. “We could have a perfectly rolled out vaccination campaign in the United States and Europe. But if we let the virus run wild and have a lot of cases elsewhere, it could boomerang – there could be a variant that can escape the protection of our immune system.

This puts additional pressure on the Biden administration and the governments of other rich countries to speed up vaccination not only at home but also in poor countries, to minimize the number of variants. The IMF assumes that a vaccine will be widely available by this summer in most advanced economies and some developing economies, but not until the second half of 2022 in the rest of the world.

Mr Vespignani added: “We need an infrastructure in place so that whatever happens we are much better prepared than in March, April and even now.” This means more extensive genomic surveillance for dangerous variants; the ability to update and rapidly administer vaccines to the general population; and rapid and inexpensive tests widely available to contain outbreaks.

Write to Greg Ip at [email protected]