#15,997
There are literally thousands of SARS-CoV-2 variants circulating around the world, and the vast majority of them pose no greater risk to public health than the `wild-type' COVID we've been dealing with for nearly 18 months.
So far, only a small handful have been identified as potentially more troublesome, either due to increased transmissibility, potentially increased virulence, or an ability to partially evade existing antibodies.
Late yesterday, the UK's Daily Mail ran an article which highlighted a supposed `Nepal Variant' (link below) as a potential threat. The resultant media attention has elicited the Tweeted response (above) from the World Health Organization.
'Nepal variant' threat to our holidays: Ministers fear new strain of Covid hitting Europe could scupper getaway plan as government is set to update its'green list' of 'safe' countries for tourists TODAY
Holidays on the Continent may be severely restricted until August as a result
The new development is a huge blow for the travel industry which is on its knees
Industry leaders and MPs have warned that more than a million jobs are at risk
By DAVID CHURCHILL and ELEANOR HAYWARD FOR THE DAILY MAIL
PUBLISHED: 17:01 EDT, 2 June 2021
This article states that `scientists warned that another variant of Covid-19 has since been identified', without naming the scientists. While entirely possible, until a new variant's behavior has been observed for some time, it is impossible to know whether it should be a candidate to become a VOI (Variant of Interest) or a VOC (Variant of Concern).
Since this article is short on details, we'll simply have to wait to see.
We do have an expert opinion, posted on the UK's Science Media Centre, which presumes this `Nepal Variant' to be the B.1.617.2 / Delta variant with the K417N mutation, which has been detected in multiple countries.
JUNE 3, 2021
A comment from Dr Jeff Barrett to help shed some light on reports of a ‘Nepal’ variant in the UK.Dr Jeff Barrett, Director of the COVID-19 Genomics Initiative at the Wellcome Sanger Institute“There have been 91 sequences observed in the GISAID database of B.1.617.2 / Delta with an additional mutation: K417N. This mutation is present in B.1.351 / Beta, and is believed to be part of why that variant is less well neutralised by vaccines. Because of this possibility, and because Delta appears more transmissible than Beta, scientists are monitoring it carefully.“This Delta+K417N has been seen in numerous countries, including the UK, Portugal, the USA, and India. It has also been observed once in Nepal (which does very little sequencing), and 14 times in Japan, of which 13 are samples from airport quarantine from travellers from Nepal.”
Whether, or how much of a threat, this `Nepal' variant truly is - at least compared to existing VOIs and VOCs - will take time to evaluate. Most variants will fail to compete, and fall by the wayside.
The concern of course, is the emergence of a rare overachiever.
