nothin Covid UK Variant: What You Need To Know | New Haven Independent

Covid UK Variant: What You Need To Know

Nathan Grubaugh

Nathan Grubaugh’s lab at Yale School of Public Health discovered the region’s first two cases last week of the new UK” variant of Covid-19. In the following article, he addresses the facts and myths about this new variant:

Last week, Gov. Lamont announced that the first two COVID-19 cases with the UK variant” were detected in Connecticut. This virus variant was first detected in England and seems to spread more easily between people. Its detection in our community raises alarms, but there is also a lot of misinformation circulating.

In February, my laboratory at the Yale School of Public Health developed a genomic surveillance” program, where we sequence the virus’s genetic code from COVID-19 cases. (Learn more on our COVIDTrackerCT website.) By comparing the genetics of the coronaviruses to others that we and others sequenced from around the world, we can group them by relatedness — like a family tree for viruses. Using these methods, we found that two of the COVID-19 cases that we sequenced last week from people in New Haven County were related to the UK variant — also known in its more technical form as B.1.1.7”.

While the UK variant coronavirus has now been detected in several states, this variant currently makes up perhaps less than 1% of the coronaviruses in the US. Even the cases that we detected in New Haven County were both associated with recent travel, suggesting that the individuals likely didn’t contract the virus in our community. This means that we have time to act before it becomes widespread.

The concern with this new variant is not that it causes a more serious COVID-19 disease. So far we have not found any differences in the outcomes of infections compared to the other coronavirus strains. The concern is that the UK variant can spread more easily between people, increasing hospitalizations simply because there are more cases.

The UK variant may be able to spread faster, but the way in which it spreads — close contact — hasn’t changed. Therefore, to control this virus, we can do the same things that we know work: (1) wear masks and maintain 6ft distance when in public and (2) avoid social gatherings with people outside of your family or household. If we can control community transmission, we can prevent the new UK variant, and any other variant, from taking hold.

Some of you may have heard that the UK variant is more infectious to children. Thankfully, that concern appears to be false. A recent study by the Public Health England examining more that 60,000 COVID-19 cases did not find any evidence for the variant affecting some age groups more than others. As with the coronaviruses already in circulation, the new variant has a much lower infection rate in ages 0 to 9 than any other group.

Unlike closing bars and restaurants, closing elementary schools has not been shown to be an effective method for reducing community COVID-19 cases. Thus, I believe that closing schools will not help to prevent the variant from becoming more common in our community. Rather, the focus of our efforts should be on reducing contacts among adults.

A common question that I receive is will the vaccines work for this variant?” According to a new report, the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine appears to protect against the UK variant. It is also widely anticipated by scientists that other vaccines will also protect against this variant and the others, including the so called South African” variant.

We can protect ourselves from the new UK variant using the methods that we already know work. We just have to try harder so that we can help protect our vulnerable populations and provide an opportunity for our kids to go to school. With vaccination started, the end is in sight, but we will only get there if we all do our part.

Nathan Grubaugh is an assistant professor of epidemiology (microbial diseases) at Yale School of Public Health.

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