New Covid variants ‘get us back a year’, experts warn UK government | Corona Virus

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Ministers are being pressured to reveal contingency plans put in place to deal with a future Covid variant that eschews current vaccines, amid warnings from scientific advisors that such an outcome could set the battle against the pandemic back for a year or more.

Recent papers by the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) suggested that the arrival of a vaccine-avoiding alternative is a “realistic possibility”. Sage has supported ongoing work on new vaccines that reduce infection and transmission more than existing vaccines, the establishment of more UK vaccine production facilities and laboratory studies to predict the evolution of variants.

With the emergence of a new variable seen as one of the main risks that could exacerbate the crisis once again, prominent scientific figures have stressed the risks. Professor Graham Medley, a member of the Sage and leader of the government’s Covid modeling group, said it was “obviously something that planners and scientists should take seriously because it would set us back away”.

“It’s not very different from the planning that needs to be done between pandemics – a new species that was able to significantly outsmart immunity would be essentially a new virus,” he said. The advantage would be that we know we can produce vaccines against this virus – and relatively quickly. The drawback is that we will be back in the same position we were in a year ago, depending on how much current immunity affects the new alternative. We hope development is slow, so that new variants emerge that are only marginally elusive and not a single big leap.” Dr Mark Pagolin, of the Covid-19 response team at Imperial College and a member of the government’s SPI-M Modeling Group, said blocking the import of exciting variants Concern with moderate to high immune escape characteristics would be critical, as this could lead to future waves of greater magnitude than those that have occurred so far.”

“It is unlikely that such a new virus will completely evade all immunity from previous infections or vaccinations,” he said. At least some immunity should remain for the most severe outcomes such as death or hospitalization. We will likely be able to update existing vaccines to include the emerging strain.

But doing so could take months and mean we may need to reimpose restrictions if there is a significant public health risk. The amount of restrictions will be a political decision and should be proportional to the extent to which this virus evades existing vaccines.”

It comes with further easing of restrictions in England on Monday when fully vaccinated people under the age of 18 will no longer be legally required to self-isolate if they have been in close contact with someone with Covid. They will be advised, but not obligated, to take a PCR test instead. Daily Covid cases are hovering around the 30,000 mark. The latest figures, from August 13, showed that 32,700 people had tested positive, and 100 more deaths were reported.

Meanwhile, a first dose of the vaccine will be offered to all 16-17-year-olds in England over the next week to give them some protection before schools return in September. Health Minister Sajid Javid urged older teens not to delay. “Get your blows as soon as possible so we can continue to live with this virus safely and enjoy our freedoms by giving yourself, your family and your community the protection they need,” he said.

Dominic Cummings, a former top adviser to Boris Johnson, called on the government to publish an “alternative escape vaccine contingency plan” and suggested MPs explore ways to force ministers to do so. One of the scientists, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they would like to see the publication of the national risk assessment related to Covid-19 contingency plans.

Munira Wilson, a spokeswoman for the Liberal Democratic Party, supports the move. “It is critical that people trust Boris Johnson’s Covid strategy and trust him not to repeat the same mistakes that have been made in the past 18 months,” she said. “By refusing to isolate oneself, violating their rules and making mistakes that cost people’s lives, the government has lost the public’s trust. Transparency is the only way to start restoring that trust.”

Stephen Reacher, professor of psychology at the University of St Andrews, said: “It makes a lot of sense to be prepared. Scotland is setting up its own permanent committee on epidemics. It will be interesting to see what comes out across the UK.

“In the long run, we need to systematically investigate what went wrong (and right) so we are prepared and also so that we can make systematic changes to protect us. The pandemic has been like a barium meal that has exposed so many shortcomings in our society. We can no longer pretend that we are not on He knew. This was a deafening wake-up call. Let’s make sure we don’t hit the snooze button.”

Government sources said Public Health England and others were monitoring the situation with rapid monitoring and genetic sequencing of the virus. A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said the vaccination program had built a “wall of defense”.

“We are committed to protecting vaccine rollout progress and our world-leading genomic capabilities at the forefront of global efforts to stay ahead of variants, with more than half a million genome sequencing samples to date,” they said.

Official figures show that the UK recorded 93 new deaths linked to Covid and 29,520 new cases yesterday. “Data from Public Health England show that two doses of Covid-19 vaccines are 90% more effective against hospitalization than the delta variant, the dominant strain in the UK.”

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