WHY IS IT WORRYING SCIENTISTS?
All viruses – including SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 – change over time. Most changes have little or no impact on their properties.
However, some changes may affect how easily they spread, their severity or the performance of vaccines against them.
This one has drawn scrutiny because it has more than 30 mutations of the spike protein that viruses use to get into human cells, UK health officials say.
That is about double the number of Delta, and makes this variant substantially different from the original coronavirus that current COVID-19 vaccines were designed to counteract.
South African scientists say some of the mutations are associated with resistance to neutralising antibodies and enhanced transmissibility, but others are not well understood, so its full significance is not yet clear.
UK Health Security Agency Chief Medical Advisor Dr Susan Hopkins told BBC radio some mutations had not been seen before, so it was not known how they would interact with the other ones, making it the most complex variant seen so far.
So more tests will be needed to confirm if it is more transmissible, infectious or can evade vaccines.
The work will take a few weeks, the World Health Organization’s technical lead on COVID-19, Maria van Kerkhove, said on Thursday. In the meantime, vaccines remain a critical tool to contain the virus.
No unusual symptoms have been reported following infection with the B.1.1.529 variant and, as with other variants some individuals are asymptomatic, South Africa’s NICD said.
WHAT HAS THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION SAID?
The UN agency will decide if it should be designated a variant of interest or variant of concern. The latter label would be applied if there is evidence that it is more contagious and vaccines work less well against it, and it would be given a Greek name.
The WHO has so far identified four variants “of concern” – Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta.
Two variants of interest are Lambda, identified in Peru in December 2020, and Mu, in Colombia in January.
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