Carelessness may be fueling rapid spread of coronavirus mutation in UK, say WHO experts

NEW YORK: World Health Organization (WHO) officials on Monday said the novel coronavirus is mutating “at a much slower rate” than the seasonal flu.

They added that research is continuing into a new, mutated strain of the virus in the UK that is reportedly much more contagious — but added that a failure to follow health precautions might be to blame for that.

It came after health experts in Britain warned at the weekend that the mutated virus could be 70 percent more transmissible than the original strain. This prompted dozens of countries in the EU and beyond to ban British travelers. Meanwhile, UK authorities strengthened existing stay-at-home orders.

WHO health experts gave a briefing on Monday about the mutation responsible for the new strain in the UK, a variant of which has also been identified in South Africa.

Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that although this strain is reported to be more contagious, there is no evidence to suggest it is any more deadly. Keeping transmission rates under control is the key, he said, because the more the virus spreads, the more chance there is for it to mutate.

Normal seasonal influenza mutates so often that scientists have to develop new vaccines every year to inoculate the population against new strains. But epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead for the organization’s coronavirus response, said the new coronavirus variant does not appear to reduce the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.

“That’s good news,” she said. “But again, there is a lot of information coming out and there’s a lot of studies that are ongoing.”

She said that scientists are investigating three key aspects of the new strain in particular: its transmission rates, whether the symptoms it causes are more or less severe than existing strains, and how antibodies respond to infection by it.

All viruses mutate, but not every mutation causes a virus to become more infectious.

“SARS-CoV-2 (the proper name for the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19) is mutating at a much slower rate than influenza,” said WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan.

“So far, even though we’ve seen a number of changes and a number of mutations, none has made a significant impact on either the susceptibility of the virus to any of the currently used therapeutics, drugs or the vaccines under development, and one hopes that that will continue to be the case.”

It is estimated that a person infected by the new UK strain of the virus spreads it to 1.5 people on average, compared with 1.1 for the original strain.

Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s health emergencies program, said it is unclear whether the increase in the UK infection rate is the result of genetic changes in the new variant or simply to human behavior because people are failing to properly follow public-health protocols.

Van Kerkhove confirmed that researchers are “trying to determine how much of that is associated with the variant itself, as well as behavioral differences in individuals that this variant has infected. They’re still working through that right now.”

Nearly 77 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 have been diagnosed around the world since the pandemic began, and almost 1.7 million people have died.

America’s leading expert on infectious diseases, Anthony Fauci, said that the US must “keep an eye on” the new strain. In an interview with CNN, he said he is not recommending to the government that it closes its borders to Brits, adding that his advice is: “Follow the (new strain) carefully but don’t overreact to it.”