New Covid-19 strain in UK 'nothing to be overly concerned' says health expert

“Viruses evolve on an ongoing basis and while the UK have been very prompt and helpful in identifying this early and sharing the data, there's no evidence at this point in time that the virus should pose a significant concern," said Dr De Gascun File picture.

The Director of the National Virus Reference Laboratory, Dr Cillian De Gascun has said that there is nothing to be overly concerned about reports of a new strain of Covid-19 which has been identified in the south east of England.

“When a novel variant like this emerges it's always important that we assess it and keep an eye on it. But at this stage there's nothing to be overly concerned about,” he told RTÉ radio’s News at One.

Dr De Gascun said there had been no instances of the strain in this country. “We will keep an eye out for it, it is important to reassure people that new variants or new strains of virus emerge all the time.

“Viruses evolve on an ongoing basis and while the UK have been very prompt and helpful in identifying this early and sharing the data, there's no evidence at this point in time that the virus should pose a significant concern," said Dr De Gascun

But the reason that they've flagged it with us and drawn our attention to it is purely because there are changes in the spike protein region of the genome in this virus in relation to the variant that they've described. 

Dr De Gascun explained that the spike protein is the part of the virus that it uses to get into human cells and it's also the part of the virus that elicits a significant immune response in the infected host.

“One of the theoretical concerns about this virus is that if you have changes occurring in that spike protein region is that you might then have an impact or the antibodies that are produced in response either to a natural infection or either to a vaccine may not be as effective against this novel variant, but at this point in time there is no evidence. 

The UK is continuing to look at this work.

“Broadly speaking when a new variant emerges like this we look to see if it is transmissible, which obviously it is. We don't yet know if it is more transmissible than any other virus variant. 

"Similarily we look to see if it's more severe, if it causes more severe disease, again there's no evidence at this point in time that it does that and then the third component is whether it is likely to have an impact on vaccine efficacy or on the immune response and again at this stage it is too early, but the reason it's been flagged is purely because certainly in the south east of England it has become one of the more predominant strains, but there's always a sampling bias in any findings of that nature.

“Again, it's early days,” he said. “The international groups have looked at the European circulation and similar strains have been identified in Denmark at this point, but we haven’t seen anything in the Republic at this stage.” Dr De Gascus said he understood that had not seen any instances of the new strain in Northern Ireland either," said Dr De Gascun. 

When asked if the new strain could reduce the efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines, Dr De Gascun said that the vaccine would elicit an immune response to a number of different parts of the spike protein - so it was very unlikely, “not impossible, but very unlikely that a single mutation would knock out the vaccine response.

“What we will do and what our colleagues in the UK are doing now, is people might remember this from the discussion around the Danish mink variant virus a couple of months back, what they found with the mink variants was that when they tested antibodies that they had harvested or taken from people who had recovered from the Sars Cov 2 infection, they tested those antibodies against the mink variant they found that the mink variant was a little bit more resistant than the wild type virus.

“So similar studies will take place no win the UK over the next few days, what they'll do is they'll look at antibodies that they've taken from people who have recovered and in the laboratory setting they will test those antibodies for the effectiveness of those antibodies against this novel variant.

“It's possible that the novel variant might be more resistant, but equally the vast majority of mutations that happen in the setting of an evolving virus tend not to have a huge impact, so put into context, the Sars Cov 2 acquires mutations at a rate of about one to two per month - obviously over the course of the last year thousands of mutations have emerged and some of those will confer a benefit to the virus and many will not,” said Dr De Gascun.