New Covid strain found in UK: Scots face potential 'extra precautions'

Nicola Sturgeon described the news of the new strain as “clearly a potentially concerning development” in the fight against Covid.

Yesterday, Uk Government Health Secretary Matt Hancock revealed cases involving the new variant are “increasing rapidly”, with initial analysis suggesting that it is growing faster than the existing variants.

Around 1000 cases have so far been identified of the new strain, predominantly in the south of England.

Commenting on the news, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon confirmed that Scotland’s Chief Medical Officer Dr Gregor Smith had briefed her on the news, and it is being closely monitored.

She tweeted: “Our CMO @DrGregorSmith has given me an initial briefing this afternoon and @scotgov will be monitoring closely.

“We will also consider whether any additional precautions are required meantime.”

The First Minister is likely going to comment more on the news at her lockdown review in the Scottish Parliament at around 2pm on Tuesday.

So what else do we know about the new variant?

Will vaccines still work?

Mr Hancock said the latest clinical advice is that it is highly unlikely that this mutation would fail to respond to a vaccine.

The vaccine produces antibodies against many regions in the spike protein, and it is unlikely a single change would make the vaccine less effective.

However, this could happen over time as more mutations occur, as is the case every year with flu.

Public Health England said this new variant includes a mutation in the spike protein and that changes in this part of the spike protein may result in the virus becoming more infectious and spreading more easily between people.

What are the scientists doing now?

Scientists will be growing the new strain in the lab to see how it responds.

This includes looking at whether it produces the same antibody response, how it reacts to the vaccine, and modelling the new strain.

It could take up to two weeks for this thorough process to be complete.

COG-UK is carrying out random sequencing of positive samples across the UK to compile a sequencing coverage report, which is sent to each of the four public health agencies each week.

It said random sampling is important to capture regional coverage.

UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock during a media briefing

Is this something unusual?

There have been many mutations in the virus since it emerged in 2019.

This is to be expected – SARS-CoV-2 is an RNA virus and these viruses mutate and change.

It has been named VUI – 202012/01 – the first variant under investigation in December.

The Danish government culled millions of mink after it emerged that hundreds of Covid-19 cases in the country were associated with SARS-CoV-2 variants associated with farmed minks — including 12 cases with a unique variant, reported on November 5.

In October a study suggested that a coronavirus variant that originated in Spanish farm workers spread rapidly throughout Europe and accounted for most UK cases.

The variant, called 20A.EU1, is known to have spread from farm workers to local populations in Spain in June and July, with people then returning from holiday in Spain most likely playing a key role in spreading the strain across Europe.