The specter of variants is resurfacing in the UK.

The British government, faced with an increase in Covid-19 contaminations, said Tuesday to "monitor very closely" a new subvariant spreading in the country, without it being established as it is if it is more contagious.

This “AY4.2” variant is a sub-variant of the highly contagious Delta which initially appeared in India and which had caused a resumption of the epidemic in late spring and early summer.

"We will not hesitate to take action if necessary," said a spokesperson for Downing Street.

However, "nothing suggests that it spreads more easily", he tried to reassure.

Poorly vaccinated minors

The emergence of this new variant despite the very strong contagiousness of the Delta, which tends to rule out new strains, raises fears of an even stronger transmissibility.

It comes as the United Kingdom, which deplores nearly 139,000 deaths from Covid-19, is faced with a growing number of positive cases, now exceeding 40,000 each day, an incidence rate much higher than in the rest from Europe.

Some scientists attribute the current degradation, which for the moment mainly concerns adolescents and young adults, to the weak vaccination of minors, to the decrease in the immunity of the oldest vaccinated very early, or to the lifting in July in England. most of the restrictions such as indoor masks. But for François Balloux, director of the Institute of Genetics at UCL, the new variant "is not at the origin of the recent increase in the number of cases in the United Kingdom". He explains that with its low frequency so far, even "a 10% higher transmissibility could only have caused a small number of additional cases".

According to the researcher, the emergence of AY4.2 therefore does not constitute "a situation comparable to the emergence of the Alpha and Delta strains which were much more transmissible (50% or more) than all the strains in circulation in the era ".

Moreover, the new variant AY4.2 is almost non-existent outside the UK, apart from three cases in the US and a few more in Denmark, which have since almost disappeared.

Work is underway to test its resistance to vaccines.

Health

France is advancing its seasonal flu vaccination campaign to couple it with the recall against Covid-19

Health

Why has no new variant emerged for months?

  • Covid 19

  • Delta variant

  • Coronavirus

  • Video

  • World

  • UK