Starker on 22/12/2020 at 05:46
The new face of contact tracing:
[video=youtube;BuBclbplgDo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuBclbplgDo[/video]
SubJeff on 22/12/2020 at 08:48
Quote Posted by heywood
Perhaps the only way we'll know for sure whether this new strain is really more virulent is if it emerges as the dominant strain in the coming weeks and months.
Don't confuse transmissibility with virulence.
nickie on 22/12/2020 at 10:20
We're back in indefinite full lockdown as is parts of England. I was looking at case numbers here yesterday and saw vaccination numbers on the NHS Wales dashboard. It reported that '282 people . . . received their vaccination in Wales but were resident outside Wales'. So far I've failed to think of any good reason for that. Any ideas anyone?
Bosh on 22/12/2020 at 11:07
Quote Posted by nickie
...received their vaccination in Wales but were resident outside Wales'. So far I've failed to think of any good reason for that. Any ideas anyone?
Just an idea... Could it be that vaccinations are currently offered at various "mass immunisation centres/hubs" at the moment, as I understand it. So it could be that people who are eligible for the vaccine right now had to go to their nearest hub (in this case somewhere in Wales) for the jab? I really don't know the answer nickie, I just know they have these hubs set up until GP surgeries can roll it out more locally.
zombe on 22/12/2020 at 12:33
Hm. That has quite a bit of stuff in there that i have encountered on British news. I did not pay much closer attention to them back then as i was/am unfamiliar with their flavor of biases (or any trustworthiness to begin with). Evidently i encountered one or more with good journalism - pity i can not remember which channel that was.
Anyway. There are some clashes with my impressions from them and what i read in this thing (a clearly much closer to original source than any news outlet can ever be). The changes in S-gene are much more substantial than i thought. All i really knew was that some tests targeting spikes failed to recognize it (compared to PCR) - nothing more (that might have been my fault of not paying enough attention). Since current vaccines have shown a very high rate of effectiveness then that translated in my mind as immunity from thous vaccines having quite a bit of leeway for spike changes. Since there have been tons of S-gene changes before and some, if i understood the link correctly, have indeed even been fairly similar - thous and others would have likely had a chance to be noticed (phase 3 testing). So, i still guess that current vaccines are probably fine - just a smidge less sure than before.
Gryzemuis on 22/12/2020 at 12:48
Quote Posted by nickie
We're back in indefinite full lockdown as is parts of England. I was looking at case numbers here yesterday and saw vaccination numbers on the NHS Wales dashboard. It reported that '282 people . . . received their vaccination in Wales but were resident outside Wales'. So far I've failed to think of any good reason for that. Any ideas anyone?
We are not in full lockdown, but the rules are a lot stricter here. Since about a week. Schools closed, non-essential stores closed. Fewer people allowed together, etc.
We have closed the border to the UK. Some people (students, lorry drivers) are stuck in the UK, currently. I can imagine that people who travel a lot should be vaccinated earlier than others. So maybe there were people stuck in Wales who couldn't go home? And they got early vaccinations, so they can be home at Christmas?
SubJeff on 22/12/2020 at 12:58
Those people are lucky to be here over Christmas because we have the best Christmas food.
zombe on 22/12/2020 at 13:31
Quote Posted by heywood
Perhaps the only way we'll know for sure whether this new strain is really more virulent is if it emerges as the dominant strain in the coming weeks and months.
That we already know (*).
Check the link SubJeff posted.
Quote:
A novel variant has been identified which has spread rapidly within the UK. We have assessed this variant as having substantially increased transmissibility with high confidence.
Also check the graph at page 8. Prevalence of the new variant (among others that share the deletion) has gone from 5% in 2020-10-12 up to 96% in 2020-11-30.
*) I assume you meant 'transmissibility'.
Gryzemuis on 22/12/2020 at 14:59
Just to make sure I understand the word "prevalence". 96% On November 30th means that end of November, of all the people who got tested positive for covid-19, 96% of those had the new strain, and 4% had an old strain of covid-19. Correct?
heywood on 22/12/2020 at 16:19
No.
That table on page 8 shows the frequency of this new variant of concern among all the sequenced samples that show deletions at positions 69 and 70 (a common mutation seen in other variants including those Danish minks). That's not the frequency among all positive samples sequenced. If you check the middle of page 3, you'll see the data set "is based on 1419 VOC genomes and 33,792 non-VOC genomes collected in weeks 42 to 48 and with results aggregated weekly at the level of NHS STP regions". So the frequency of this new variant among all positives in the study is still only 4%.
zombe -
Without controls, I don't know how you can separate the influence of genetic factors from host behavior and local extrinsic factors like weather.
If you recall, early in the pandemic, there was a mutation (D614->G614) that originated in Europe and quickly became prevalent everywhere. That led many people to think the mutation provided a fitness advantage. But even now, many months later, there are still (
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20201217/Gene-surfing-caused-the-SARS-CoV-2-D614G-variant-to-rise-to-dominance-in-the-US.aspx) studies debating the cause and effect relationship.
Over the past few months, we've seen large numbers of clusters and periods of exponentially growing community spread appear all over the world, happening around the same time but independent of each other. At the macro level, case growth in the Southeast UK right now looks no different than what's happening in dozens if not hundreds of other places. So I think it's premature to single this variant out for extra concern based on 1419 samples of it collected over a month in which the world accumulated 20M new cases.
Here in the US, and I assume elsewhere too, we have had different variants dominate in different places at different times and there's no reason to conclude that it's a result of some variants spreading more easily than others. It's just as likely that the prevalence of a certain variant is a side effect of how it spread. One super-spreading event can kick off a cluster that turns into a regional outbreak. For example, a study estimated that up to 300k cases can be traced to a single corporate conference that was held in my area in the spring. It was the worst super-spreader event and worst regional outbreak the US experienced in the first wave. But we don't have a reason to believe the particular variant associated with that event spread more easily than other variants that entered the US in the same time frame. For all we know, it could have just been one person shedding lots of virus in the wrong place at the wrong time. The cause and effect is unclear.
And yes, I did mean transmissibility. Serves me right for drinking and posting.