Paul Hunter

How concerned should we be by the Indian variant?

(Getty images)

In recent weeks there has been a lot of new-found optimism in Britain with regards to Covid: case numbers, hospitalisations and deaths have dramatically fallen and the vaccine roll out continues at pace. The virus has now been overtaken as the main cause of death in England and Wales for the first time since autumn. But the pandemic continues to grow, and nowhere more so is this the case than India.

Its hospitals are overrun. Crematoriums are overwhelmed and the first of nine planes from Britain set off on Sunday night to provide oxygen, ventilators and aid. Why should it be surging now? One of the theories behind this explosion is a new variant of coronavirus (B.1.617).

As an epidemiologist and medical academic, I have spent most of my career investigating epidemics and outbreaks of infectious disease. Yet no other disease before Covid has had the ability to shift me from optimism to pessimism and back again as quickly as Covid does. The reason? New variants. So how concerned should we be by B.1.617? And could it impact our roadmap out of lockdown? There is, in short, certainly a theoretical reason to be concerned. Practically, however, we have yet to see enough evidence that it really is a game-changer.

Since Covid began spreading around the globe, there have been tens of thousands of mutations to the virus. These mutations arise entirely randomly. The only factor that influences their appearance is the number of infections that are occurring in any given place. The vast majority of mutations are of little relevance.

But some mutations do cause serious problems. We saw with the Kent variant that the virus became more transmissible due to the N501Y mutation. The South African and Brazilian variants also both have this same N501Y mutation. However, they also contained another distinct change: an ‘escape mutation’, E484K.

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