Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: The lethal and face-changing coronavirus continues to play hide-and-seek with human beings in different countries.
While the fully vaccinated Americans planned to go mask-free under the new Covid-19 protocols on Friday, a leading coronavirus advisor in the United Kingdom has warned that the government needs to “act hard and act fast” if the new variant from India turns out to evade vaccines.
“Prime Minister Boris Johnson must not ‘dither and delay as in the past, said Prof. Stephen Reicher, who advises the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), media reported.
On Monday, PM Johnson had confirmed the third stage of easing England’s lockdown restrictions to allow people to mix indoors, including in pubs and restaurants.
Barely two days later, on Wednesday, he issued an extraordinary warning about the “potentially lethal danger” variants – such as those from India – could pose to the UK’s successful vaccination program, which had seen 68% of adults receiving the first dose as of Wednesday.
“Should these prove highly transmissible and elude the protection of our vaccines,” he told Members of Parliament, “they would have the potential to cause even greater suffering than we endured in January.”
Citing high infection and death numbers in India, Prof. Reicher said the UK should observe utmost caution “unless we want to turn into another India.”
There are three variants in the UK that have been identified in India, but scientists are most concerned about B.1.617.2.
According to the last Public Health England update on variants from Thursday, detected cases of B.1.617.2 more than doubled to 520 last week.
Currently, there is no confirmed data about the impact the variant may have on vaccines, though England’s chief medical officer, Prof. Chris Whitty, said: “At this point in time our view is it is less likely to be able to escape vaccination than some of the other variants, particularly the South African one.”
Nonetheless, concerns are growing about the variant’s presence in the UK, particularly as Prof Whitty said it could be at least as transmissible as the Kent variant – which caused the massive spike of infections, hospital admissions, and deaths in December and January.
While detected infections involving the variant remain relatively low, cases are nonetheless rising sharply, media reported.
Given the Indian variant’s transmissibility, any evidence it can elude vaccines could force Johnson to rethink his road map and even reinforce restrictions.
Prof Reicher warned against “dither and delay” – something Johnson has been accused of with all three of the national lockdowns he has imposed during the pandemic.
For example, Prof Neil Ferguson, the scientist whose modeling convinced the PM to impose the first lockdown on March 23, 2020, told MPs in June last year that deaths during the first wave could have been halved if Johnson had started that lockdown one week earlier.
According to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) weekly epidemiological report, released on Tuesday, the B.1.617.2 variant has been identified in 31 countries. Some reports said it was identified in 44 countries. Of those, the UK reported the largest number of cases outside India.
However, the WHO also said its potential impact on vaccines remains “uncertain”.