Re: Covid new strain.

Here's a bit more emerging news. https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/13...vid-strain-EVG

I'm prolly gonna leave emerging news for others to follow.

Re: Covid new strain.

Interesting. The article from which the image comes gets somewhat, er, technical!! Obviously the arrows in it are generic directions, although it is a curious coincidence that the Uk one points to around Leeds!!

Although you cite Kent as the initial epicentre in the UK, which it probably is, it seems a little simplistic IMHO to land the majority of the blame onto illegals. After all, it's not just them that arrive there, and there are a somewhat significant number of other users of ports down there!!

But I'm not claiming that they are not a contributory factor! Anyone who travels abroad is a potential carrier. But we also know that even the most legitimate of traveller doesn't go around in an isolation cocoon, and nor do they ensure that they, anyone theyve been in proximity to, their family and other housemates remain in strict quarantine when they get home!

Re: Covid new strain.

Ha ha You beat me to it.

Re: Covid new strain.

That's about 10000 lorries per day via Dover alone. The lateral flow test seems to be about 50% accurate ( https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4848), so they might have to develop some kind of fast tracking of swab tests for it to be of any real value.

Re: Covid new strain.

It's that while Kent is one of the cross chanel ports it seems that it's where most illegals get kicked off the vehicles they've sleazed into in order to get in to the UK.

Re: Covid new strain.

I'm guessing it entered the UK in a Pfizer lorry?

Re: Covid new strain.

Don't doubt it. As said, quite probably a contributory factor, but not sure about the order of magnitude.

After all, as I point out above, 10000 lorries per day go through Dover and it's highly unlikely that the drivers spend the ferry crossing sat alone in their cabs in the confined area of the hold (not even sure they're allowed to?), and that they don't get close to others at their collection/drop off points.

Re: Covid new strain.

One of the (scientific) theories on the origin of the variant is that it emerged from the treatment of a Covid-infected, immunosuppressed patient who was then unsuccessfully treated with plasma from covid survivors :

"The mutations found in B.1.1.5 have all been seen evolving separately in immune compromised patients (like those on cancer treatment) who became chronically infected with the virus. These patients are unable to fight off their infection, meaning SARS-CoV-2 has time, to survive in their bodies and mutate. Like a living laboratory for its evolution.
What's more, in places like the UK, immune compromised patients are treated with convalescent plasma donated by Covid-19 survivors, chock full of antibodies against the virus. If these therapies fail, the don't just fail the patient - they allow the virus inside them to adapt mutations to avoid those antibodies.

It's only a theory, and the experimental results that could stand it up will be a long time in coming. But it's a plausible explanation for how the UK may have found itself home to a newly virulent strain of Covid-19."


https://www.itv.com/news/2020-12-19/...ous-new-strain

Re: Covid new strain.

Now that would be a cruel irony Annie.

Re: Covid new strain.

Here's a science paper :

"What evolutionary processes or selective pressures might have given rise to lineage B.1.1.7? High rates of mutation accumulation over short time periods have been reported previously in studies of immunodeficient or immunosuppressed patients who are chronically infected with SARS-CoV-2 (Choi et al. 2020; Avanzato et al. 2020; Kemp et al. 2020). These infections exhibit detectable SARS-CoV-2 RNA for 2-4 months or longer (although there are also reports of long infections in some immunocompetent individuals).

The patients are treated with convalescent plasma (sometimes more than once) and usually also with the drug remdesivir. Virus genome sequencing of these infections reveals unusually large numbers of nucleotide changes and deletion mutations and often high ratios of non-synonymous to synonymous changes. Convalescent plasma is often given when patient viral loads are high, and Kemp et al. (2020) report that intra-patient virus genetic diversity increased after plasma treatment was given.

Under such circumstances, the evolutionary dynamics of and selective pressures upon the intra-patient virus population are expected to be very different to those experienced in typical infection. First, selection from natural immune responses in immune-deficient/suppressed patients will be weak or absent. Second, the selection arising from antibody therapy may be strong due to high antibody concentrations. Third, if antibody therapy is administered after many weeks of chronic infection, the virus population may be unusually large and genetically diverse at the time that antibody-mediated selective pressure is applied, creating suitable circumstances for the rapid fixation of multiple virus genetic changes through direct selection and genetic hitchhiking.

These considerations lead us to hypothesise that the unusual genetic divergence of lineage B.1.1.7 may have resulted, at least in part, from virus evolution with a chronically-infected individual. Although such infections are rare, and onward transmission from them presumably even rarer, they are not improbable given the ongoing large number of new infections.

Although we speculate here that chronic infection played a role in the origins of the B.1.1.7 variant, this remains a hypothesis and we cannot yet infer the precise nature of this event."

https://virological.org/t/preliminar...-mutations/563

They haven't proved it but it makes the most sense as we do treat immunosuppressed patients with Plasma in the UK. Such treatment is most likely to have taken place at a specialist unit in London which is the heart of the variant strain outbreak.