B.1.1.529 Omicron variant

[Woodchopper]

Thread on the B.1.1.529 variant
https://twitter.com/miamalan/status/1463846528578109444

tl;dr

Spreading rapidly in South Africa, and "starting to see generalised community transmission (as opposed to just cluster outbreaks)"

Has mutations which are associated with it escaping immunity and being more transmissible.

But a lot remains unknown.

[Woodchopper]

Press release: https://twitter.com/miamalan/status/1463828772164182020

[Woodchopper]

Video by Professor Tulio de Oliveira, who known more than anyone about Covid in South Africa.
https://twitter.com/Newzroom405/status/ ... 84837?s=20

[Woodchopper]

As with everything else its best to wait and see until we get more information.

It appears that the variant is relatively easy to detect with a PCR test so we should get some confirmation soon as to whether it is actually rapidly displacing Delta in South Africa. If it doesn't we probably don't need to worry about it.

[Woodchopper]

Thread on the B.1.1.529 variant
https://twitter.com/miamalan/status/1463846528578109444

tl;dr

Spreading rapidly in South Africa, and "starting to see generalised community transmission (as opposed to just cluster outbreaks)"

Has mutations which are associated with it escaping immunity and being more transmissible.

But a lot remains unknown.

There are now just 100 confirmed cases. But as with Alpha, S gene dropout appears to be a good proxy for the spread of B.1.1.529, and the reports of rapid community spread in provinces of South Africa are based upon this method.

[Woodchopper]

Press release: https://twitter.com/miamalan/status/1463828772164182020

Better link: https://www.nicd.ac.za/new-covid-19-var ... th-africa/

[Woodchopper]

More on the spread in South Africa: https://twitter.com/miamalan/status/146 ... 74626?s=21

[Woodchopper]

Dramatic thread by Tulio de Olivera:
https://twitter.com/tuliodna/status/146 ... 60130?s=21

If you haven’t been following him over the past couple of years he’s South Africa’s leading virologist.

[Hunting Dog]

Re; the appeal for support for South Africa, the Tale of Two Pandemics article in the graun brought things home to me

[Woodchopper]

Write up in Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03552-w

[shpalman]

travel restrictions

[Stranger Mouse]

As a layman trying to protect a 93 year old how much should I be sh.tting myself?

[Woodchopper]

As a layman trying to protect a 93 year old how much should I be sh.tting myself?

It’s too early to order new trousers.

It appears to be spreading rapidly in South Africa. But they are at a low ebb anyway so we are still looking at a small number of cases. We have yet to see whether it’ll result in mass infection.

The population of South Africa is different to that of the UK. As far as I remember about 20% of the South African population has been double vaccinated. So we don’t know what will happen in a population with much higher levels (including booster doses). That said, there has been a lot of natural infection in South Africa so much more people will have antibodies.

We also don’t know whether the new variant causes death or serious illness at the same rate as Delta.

We should get some answers to these issues within the next few weeks.

[Woodchopper]

Detailed thread on the mutations: https://twitter.com/jcbarret/status/146 ... 97923?s=21

[Woodchopper]

Detailed thread on the mutations: https://twitter.com/jcbarret/status/146 ... 97923?s=21

And another: https://twitter.com/jbloom_lab/status/1 ... 84705?s=21

[shpalman]

A tracker of new Nu variant news around the world: https://newsnodes.com/nu_tracker

Frankly it's probably all over the place already.

[jimbob]

A tracker of new Nu variant news around the world: https://newsnodes.com/nu_tracker

Frankly it's probably all over the place already.

Yup

[Lydia Gwilt]

Dramatic thread by Tulio de Olivera:
https://twitter.com/tuliodna/status/146 ... 60130?s=21

If you haven’t been following him over the past couple of years he’s South Africa’s leading virologist.

According to himself! He's also a smug self-publicising loose cannon.
He started a baseless panic in the summer that led to more than a million doses of perfectly good vaccine being trashed, and put back the SA vaccination programme by at least 6 months ( who knows how many people died as a result) - as a result of misinterpreting sequence data and going straight to the press, before discussing it with public health or anyone else. If you mention this to him he is completely unrepentant.

He's done the same with this, there was a slight rise in cases in Gauteng province, he sequenced 2000 samples of which 22 were this new variant - 0.1% so most unlikely to be the cause of the rise. His first port of call was the press - international panic, 6 southern African countries completely blocked and economies well on the way to being trashed again. Well done, de Olivera!

[Woodchopper]

travel restrictions

EU commission proposed activating “the emergency brake to stop air travel from the southern African region due to the variant of concern B.1.1.529.”
https://twitter.com/vonderleyen/status/ ... 98018?s=21

[Woodchopper]

A tracker of new Nu variant news around the world: https://newsnodes.com/nu_tracker

Frankly it's probably all over the place already.

Yup

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has said that Israel is “on the verge of an emergency, and I ask everyone to be fully prepared and harnessed for work around the clock” after a case of the South African B.1.1.529 coronavirus variant was discovered in Israel.

https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/sou ... ael-687074

[Woodchopper]

BioNTech will take two weeks to assess vaccine against latest Covid variant

BioNTech will know in two weeks whether the vaccine it developed with Pfizer will work against the new B.1.1.529 variant of Covid that has emerged in southern Africa.

The German company says it is testing the vaccine against the strain in the lab. A spokesperson said the variant “differs significantly from previously observed variants” because of additional mutations on the spike protein, which vaccines target.

“Pfizer and BioNTech have taken actions months ago to be able to adapt the mRNA vaccine within six weeks and ship initial batches within 100 days in the event of an escape variant,” she said.

“To that end, the companies have begun clinical trials with variant-specific vaccines (alpha and delta) to collect safety and tolerability data that can be provided to regulators.”

From the FTs rolling update

[hakwright]

It's kind of quirky that this B.1.1.529 variant is likely to be given the Greek letter designation "Nu".

Given previous (expected) anglicised mispronunciations of Greek letters, we can expect:
"Have you heard about that new covid variant?"
"What's it called?"
"The Nu variant"
"Yes but what's it called"

(The Greek pronunciation is "Ni", a bit more Monty Pythonesque...)

Silliness aside, it will be a nervous time watching how this variant spreads and what data starts to emerge about infectiousness, health impacts, vaccine resistance etc. A new nastier variant was always on the cards, and this could turn into the next nasty one we have to deal with.

Howard

[Woodchopper]

travel restrictions

EU commission proposed activating “the emergency brake to stop air travel from the southern African region due to the variant of concern B.1.1.529.”
https://twitter.com/vonderleyen/status/ ... 98018?s=21

Looks like a plane load of people who flew from South Africa to the Netherlands have been refused permission to disembark.

[shpalman]

It's kind of quirky that this B.1.1.529 variant is likely to be given the Greek letter designation "Nu".

Given previous (expected) anglicised mispronunciations of Greek letters, we can expect:
"Have you heard about that new covid variant?"
"What's it called?"
"The Nu variant"
"Yes but what's it called"

WHO's on first?

[shpalman]

travel restrictions

EU commission proposed activating “the emergency brake to stop air travel from the southern African region due to the variant of concern B.1.1.529.”
https://twitter.com/vonderleyen/status/ ... 98018?s=21

The planes will all stall.