Prof Ravi Gupta of the University of Cambridge said that unpicking issues around coronavirus variants is more complex than last year, given that many people in the population have now either had Covid, or been vaccinated.
Gupta added that while B.1.617.2 does not have the E484Q mutation seen in the other two India variants that might help it to escape the body’s immune response, it has other mutations, including one called T478K.
“We don’t know anything about this mutation at the moment, we are running experiments at the moment” he said. “We need to keep an open mind as to what that mutation may do in terms of changing susceptibility neutralising antibodies for example.”
Gupta noted the mutations the India variants and others contain highlights that the idea, mooted last year, that new variants tended to show the same mutations is incorrect. Instead the virus is exploring different ways of achieving similar outcomes, such as dodging antibodies or binding to human cells.
“It shows that the virus has multiple routes to doing things” Gupta said.
Prof Sharon Peacock of the University of Cambridge added the UK is in a very different position to last year, with the level of disease dropping, vaccination programme underway and surge testing in place for variants of concern. “[B.1.617.2] isn’t a special variant of concern that is going to get around washing your hands and distancing and wearing a mask and being in a well-ventilated place,” she said.
Nonetheless, the experts warned it’s important to track and understand the variants noting that while many will be protected against severe disease and death because of the vaccines, some will remain susceptible to coronavirus, while such efforts will also help in work to tweak Covid vaccines to maintain their efficacy against new variants.
“As we are opening up society now, what we don’t want to see is transmission of these variants that have more immune escape properties because then the vulnerable people within in the UK population are at greater risk, we think,” said Gupta.
Gupta added that it is a possibility that B.1.617.2 – or even the South African variant – could become dominant in the UK.
“We have very low transmission in the UK, so there is an opening in a way for a virus that is better adapted to vaccinated people to start transmitting,” he said. “It all depends on the dynamics of transmission and how quickly we can detect them and close them off.”
