How convenient! The British government has been too late to contain Sars-CoV-2 for months and, with more than 67,000 Covid-19 deaths, has almost three times as many victims as the more populous Germany, there is a new one, supposedly 70 percent more contagious virus variant.
So it is not the failure of Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his cabinet, so the message, but the virus that dares to mutate.
Please no misunderstandings: The virus variant B.1.1.7. exists. It has been shown to have been circulating in Great Britain at least since September 20 and is now the cause of “an increasing proportion of Covid-19 cases,” report researchers from the British Covid-19 genome research consortium.
After Kent and the Greater London area, it is now represented in “more and more regions” and has an “unusually large number of genetic changes”. The changes in the spike protein, the sting that the virus uses to enter cells, are of particular concern.
Easier docking to human cells?
Three of these mutations could affect the ability of the virus to infect people and make them more or less seriously ill with Covid-19. Mutation “N501Y”, for example, may make it easier for the virus to dock onto human cells, while another could help it escape the immune system.
But whether all of this is really the case, the crucial experiments in the laboratory have so far been missing. Only there it can be checked whether B.1.1.7 actually attacks cells faster or more aggressively than conventional Sars-CoV-2 viruses.
“It is difficult to predict the effects of mutations,” said the genomic epidemiologist Emma Hodcroft, who at the University of Bern, follows the transmission chains with the help of the Nextstrain computer program she designed, the Tagesspiegel.
[Mehr zum Thema: Unser Kolumnist Martenstein fragt sich: Was, wenn das Virus bleibt? (T+)
Selbst wenn die neue Variante im Labor also infektiöser erscheint, muss es nicht bedeuten, dass die neue Variante auch im Alltag durchsetzungsfähiger ist.
Die Verbreitung könnte auch Folge eines oder mehrerer Superspreading-Ereignisse gewesen sein. Auch andere Virusvarianten verbreiteten sich so – etwa jene, die im Skiort Ischgl präsent und alsbald überall in Europa zu finden war. Das heißt nicht, dass von Varianten keine Gefahr ausgeht.
Versagen die Impfstoffe der ersten Generation?
Es kann passieren, dass irgendwann infektiösere oder anders krank machende Viren auftreten. Oder solche, gegen die die Covid-19-Impfstoffe der ersten Generation keinen Schutz mehr bieten. Bei B.1.1.7 und anderen Varianten ist das bislang nicht der Fall, so Experten.
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But it’s shoddy to scare people with preliminary information in order to gain an advantage in political intrigue rather than honestly informing them about scientific uncertainty. The British are now seeing how much this can turn into the opposite: Europe is discussing whether it is necessary and proportionate to stop border traffic with Great Britain, despite the lack of knowledge about the virus variant.
Not an easy decision, even if the Netherlands or Belgium, for example, have already made it. Because border closings result in economic and social hardship and cannot be a long-term strategy. The virus variant has not yet been “seen” in Germany, Charité virologist Christian Drosten tweeted, but even closed borders will not prevent this in the long term. From midnight onwards, landings from Great Britain are also prohibited in Germany, according to Berlin on Sunday.
What more than 300 researchers * demanded in the journal “Lancet” on Friday is needed: a truly European strategy. In order to avoid a “ping-pong effect of importing and re-importing Sars-CoV-2 infections, the number of cases in European countries should be reduced in a synchronized manner,” they write.
This can best ensure that the borders are kept open. You are probably right with this objection to small states. Unfortunately, it’s pretty popular right now in the UK.
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