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UK coronavirus variant may be more able to infect children: scientists

28 points by belltaco 6y ago

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ogogmad 6y ago
So should schools now stay closed after New Year?
- bioinformatics 6y ago
  I would close schools forever, but that's my personal opinion.
clankyclanker 6y ago
Have scientists been able to confirm that the virus just isn't infecting children, versus infecting them asymptomatically? Is this new strain more symptomatic in children? Essentially: does the UK do baseline testing (whether or not you appear symptomatic, unlike the US) across all age groups to a point that we can tell children are now being infected at a higher rate?
- frereubu 6y ago
  There are a number of programmes like this one at Imperial - https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/197217/home-testing-coronavirus-track-levels-infection/ https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/197217/home-testing-coronavi... and another that I can't find a link to at UCL. The UCL one in particular was about regular whole-family testing, although I pity the parents who try to regularly test their kids - my 5-year-old would probably chew her own arm off rather than have a cotton bud shoved a long way up her nose again... Edit: This was also an interesting BBC podcast where they spoke to a researcher who found antibodies that respond to this coronavirus in blood samples from children that were taken years before this outbreak, suggesting that children have some kind of pre-existing immunity: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000mzpr https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000mzpr
tus88 6y ago
Why are they so confident existing vaccines in development will work against the new strain? Isn't that why we get a new flu shot every year, because vaccines don't work against mutated viruses?
- dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
  Since vaccination has just started, I see no ethically neutral way of verifying it fast.
- codeulike 6y ago
  Flu changes particularly fast, coronaviruses change much more slowly. However this new covid strain does have some differences in the critical 'spike' bit that vaccines target. They are fairly confident the vaccines will still work. They are doing lab tests to verify. I read somewhere that we'll know more in 2 weeks but I can't remember where I saw that. If the vaccines arent so effective against the new strain, its relatively easy to tweak them (its not like starting from scratch, we know the vaccine approaches work, just need to tweak the payload a little).
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
bpodgursky 6y ago
> “There is a hint that it has a higher propensity to infect children,” said Neil Ferguson, a professor and infectious disease epidemiologist at Imperial College London and also a member of NERVTAG. Yeah, we all remember who he is. Forgive me if I take any quotes from Neil Ferguson with a spoon of salt.
- Spare_account 6y ago
  Can you elaborate on this for me, I am not familiar with him
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - bpodgursky 6y ago
    He built the models back in March or April which led to the initial mass lockdowns, because they projected extraordinarily high casualty counts. Turns out the model was something like 10,000 lines of undocumented and untested C code, which was... basically impossible to analyze or explain.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - whycombagator 6y ago
      Wikipedia[0] says this: > Ferguson's research has raised questions by virologist Hendrik Streeck. Ferguson is the corresponding author for a paper titled "Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand", which describes itself as having "informed policymaking in the UK and other countries in recent weeks".[55] Streeck stated in reference to the paper "In the – really good – model studies by the Imperial College about the progress of the epidemic, the authors assume, for example, that 50 percent of households in which there is a case do not comply with the voluntary quarantine. Where does such an assumption come from? I think we should establish more facts."[56] The computer models which Ferguson authored were initially criticised as "unreliable" and "a buggy mess,"[57][58] but subsequent efforts to reproduce the results were successful.[59] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Ferguson_(epidemiologist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Ferguson_(epidemiologist) [59] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01685-y https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01685-y
codeulike 6y ago
One of the "interesting" things about the new strain is that generally there is genetic drift happening all the time with the virus and you can trace it internationally into a sort of 'family tree'. This can be used to work out how it is spreading geographically, its like a fingerprint that changes as it spreads. e.g. the tree diagrams in this tweet: https://twitter.com/firefoxx66/status/1340359989395861506 https://twitter.com/firefoxx66/status/1340359989395861506 The new strain is notable because it has no obvious ancestors - it has about 14 or so changes that can't be traced backwards in the tree. This points to it arising within one immunocompromised individual. See https://virological.org/t/preliminary-genomic-characterisation-of-an-emergent-sars-cov-2-lineage-in-the-uk-defined-by-a-novel-set-of-spike-mutations/563 https://virological.org/t/preliminary-genomic-characterisati... "The accrual of 14 lineage-specific amino acid replacements prior to its detection is, to date, unprecedented in the global virus genomic data for the COVID-19 pandemic." "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." In all of this, its worth remembering we've never tracked an epidemic in this much detail before, so perhaps this sort of thing is just par for the course.
- bioinformatics 6y ago
  Genetic drift that fixates 14 new mutations, including deletions, in the most negative selected gene in this virus is an abomination, almost statistically impossible, very very close to 0. Even if the incubation and infection time inside this one individual was enough for 1,000,000 generations there's no way for something like that to happen. "The accrual of 14 lineage-specific amino acid replacements prior to its detection is, to date, unprecedented in the global virus genomic data for the COVID-19 pandemic." No, this unprecedented on any living and non-living thing that we know.[1] "In all of this, its worth remembering we've never tracked an epidemic in this much detail before, so perhaps this sort of thing is just par for the course." We tracked very well the flu during its high season, and influenza genomes are used constant to monitor mutations and other aspects of viral evolution, population genetics and phylogeny. [1] https://www.pnas.org/content/96/24/13910 https://www.pnas.org/content/96/24/13910

28 points by belltaco 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ogogmad 6y ago

So should schools now stay closed after New Year?

bioinformatics 6y ago
I would close schools forever, but that's my personal opinion.

clankyclanker 6y ago

Have scientists been able to confirm that the virus just isn't infecting children, versus infecting them asymptomatically? Is this new strain more symptomatic in children? Essentially: does the UK do baseline testing (whether or not you appear symptomatic, unlike the US) across all age groups to a point that we can tell children are now being infected at a higher rate?

frereubu 6y ago
There are a number of programmes like this one at Imperial - https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/197217/home-testing-coronavirus-track-levels-infection/ https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/197217/home-testing-coronavi... and another that I can't find a link to at UCL. The UCL one in particular was about regular whole-family testing, although I pity the parents who try to regularly test their kids - my 5-year-old would probably chew her own arm off rather than have a cotton bud shoved a long way up her nose again... Edit: This was also an interesting BBC podcast where they spoke to a researcher who found antibodies that respond to this coronavirus in blood samples from children that were taken years before this outbreak, suggesting that children have some kind of pre-existing immunity: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000mzpr https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000mzpr

tus88 6y ago

Why are they so confident existing vaccines in development will work against the new strain? Isn't that why we get a new flu shot every year, because vaccines don't work against mutated viruses?

dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
Since vaccination has just started, I see no ethically neutral way of verifying it fast.
codeulike 6y ago
Flu changes particularly fast, coronaviruses change much more slowly. However this new covid strain does have some differences in the critical 'spike' bit that vaccines target. They are fairly confident the vaccines will still work. They are doing lab tests to verify. I read somewhere that we'll know more in 2 weeks but I can't remember where I saw that. If the vaccines arent so effective against the new strain, its relatively easy to tweak them (its not like starting from scratch, we know the vaccine approaches work, just need to tweak the payload a little).
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

bpodgursky 6y ago

> “There is a hint that it has a higher propensity to infect children,” said Neil Ferguson, a professor and infectious disease epidemiologist at Imperial College London and also a member of NERVTAG. Yeah, we all remember who he is. Forgive me if I take any quotes from Neil Ferguson with a spoon of salt.

Spare_account 6y ago
Can you elaborate on this for me, I am not familiar with him
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- bpodgursky 6y ago
  He built the models back in March or April which led to the initial mass lockdowns, because they projected extraordinarily high casualty counts. Turns out the model was something like 10,000 lines of undocumented and untested C code, which was... basically impossible to analyze or explain.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - whycombagator 6y ago
    Wikipedia[0] says this: > Ferguson's research has raised questions by virologist Hendrik Streeck. Ferguson is the corresponding author for a paper titled "Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand", which describes itself as having "informed policymaking in the UK and other countries in recent weeks".[55] Streeck stated in reference to the paper "In the – really good – model studies by the Imperial College about the progress of the epidemic, the authors assume, for example, that 50 percent of households in which there is a case do not comply with the voluntary quarantine. Where does such an assumption come from? I think we should establish more facts."[56] The computer models which Ferguson authored were initially criticised as "unreliable" and "a buggy mess,"[57][58] but subsequent efforts to reproduce the results were successful.[59] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Ferguson_(epidemiologist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Ferguson_(epidemiologist) [59] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01685-y https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01685-y

codeulike 6y ago

One of the "interesting" things about the new strain is that generally there is genetic drift happening all the time with the virus and you can trace it internationally into a sort of 'family tree'. This can be used to work out how it is spreading geographically, its like a fingerprint that changes as it spreads. e.g. the tree diagrams in this tweet: https://twitter.com/firefoxx66/status/1340359989395861506 https://twitter.com/firefoxx66/status/1340359989395861506 The new strain is notable because it has no obvious ancestors - it has about 14 or so changes that can't be traced backwards in the tree. This points to it arising within one immunocompromised individual. See https://virological.org/t/preliminary-genomic-characterisation-of-an-emergent-sars-cov-2-lineage-in-the-uk-defined-by-a-novel-set-of-spike-mutations/563 https://virological.org/t/preliminary-genomic-characterisati... "The accrual of 14 lineage-specific amino acid replacements prior to its detection is, to date, unprecedented in the global virus genomic data for the COVID-19 pandemic." "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." In all of this, its worth remembering we've never tracked an epidemic in this much detail before, so perhaps this sort of thing is just par for the course.

bioinformatics 6y ago
Genetic drift that fixates 14 new mutations, including deletions, in the most negative selected gene in this virus is an abomination, almost statistically impossible, very very close to 0. Even if the incubation and infection time inside this one individual was enough for 1,000,000 generations there's no way for something like that to happen. "The accrual of 14 lineage-specific amino acid replacements prior to its detection is, to date, unprecedented in the global virus genomic data for the COVID-19 pandemic." No, this unprecedented on any living and non-living thing that we know.[1] "In all of this, its worth remembering we've never tracked an epidemic in this much detail before, so perhaps this sort of thing is just par for the course." We tracked very well the flu during its high season, and influenza genomes are used constant to monitor mutations and other aspects of viral evolution, population genetics and phylogeny. [1] https://www.pnas.org/content/96/24/13910 https://www.pnas.org/content/96/24/13910