DAYS after an outcry over Taoiseach Micheál Martin’s claim that Northern Ireland was not testing for the new UK Covid strain, a top virologist leading the work has revealed its outcomes.
Dr Conall McCaughey, who is based at the regional virus laboratory in Belfast, said he and his team have dramatically scaled up geonome sequencing work on the more infectious ‘Kent’ variant over the past four weeks – and found that almost half of coronavirus cases they have tested in the north are caused by it.
It is estimated the strain – which came to prominence after a massive Covid spike in southern England in December – is between 50 to 70 per cent more transmissible than the original variant.
In an interview with The Irish News, Dr McCaughey stressed, however, that much more monitoring is required as they have only examined samples for mainly hospital patients, and that the focus needs be on people testing positive in the community.
They also work with colleagues from Queen’s University Belfast.
“In our lab, we do sequencing on the ‘Pillar 1’ testing. That’s the testing which is done through the hospital laboratories. But obviously, the bulk of positives are in Pillar 2, which goes through the national testing initiatives and relates to community transmission. We don’t have good data for that – but that is about to change,” he said.
“Really what we want to examine are people in the community who have had recent onset of Covid symptoms and are getting swabbed. That is a very valuable way of looking at how it’s changing each week and monitoring if there are differences within regions of Ireland and the UK.
“As different variants come along, we want to track them and work out what is increasing in prevalence. The timeliness of coronavirus sequencing is important.”
He added: “In December, we were doing whole genome sequencing on around 50 samples a week. This week we’re on target to do 300.
“A sample has to be positive for coronavirus. We then collect a derivative from it and do the sequencing and quite a lot of effort has gone into it. There’s a business case for further expansion which should be approved later this week, we’re planning on that.
“The data that we have, there’s a few different ways of looking at it. We have a finished sequence from January. We can look at a specific test that gives up a heads up and tells us this essentially looks like it’s the B.1.1.7 variant (the Kent variant).
“It’s around 50 per cent at the moment. Those are the figures we’re supplying to the Department of Health.
“These are mostly hospital and outbreak samples and they are coming out at around the 50 per mark. So it looks as if this variant has increased relatively quickly from early December when there wasn’t a lot of it around.”
With more than 30 years’ experience in his field, Dr McCaughey said he was surprised by the taoiseach’s comments – saying “it was best to characterise them as a misunderstanding”, and adding he was glad their work was defended by the Department of Health and politicians including Arlene Foster.
But he did accept that capacity for sequencing could be improved – saying there was a drive to do this across Europe.
As stricter border controls are expected to be introduced to prevent the spread of more dangerous strains, including hotel quarantine for overseas passengers arriving into Northern Ireland, Dr McCaughey said he welcomed moves to keep emerging variants at “sufficiently low levels” and delay “their introduction”.
But he warned of the inevitability of further mutations and said it was essential to plan to try to limit transmission, adding that new data on the Kent variant which suggested it causes more serious infection and death is “worrying”.
Despite his concern, the Belfast virologist said he is “very optimistic in the long-term” due to the vaccine roll-out and believes its impact will be felt by summer.
“I do think the vaccine is the endgame. We will still be concerned about this virus for quite some time, but with the vaccination programme and control measures that are required – even with the more transmissible variant – I think we should expect our efforts to control this virus should be more successful and the disruption economically, socially and educationally becomes less of a problem.”
And he said that adapting vaccines to take account of any future mutations is “very doable”.
“Obviously, there would be a testing and regulatory process to go through but that would be fundamentally simpler than what has been done so far. However, it is not necessary at this stage. We have no evidence we need to change the vaccines now.
“So if there’s a race eventually between the vaccine and the virus, we will able to keep up with it. You could envisage a situation where it’s a bit like flu, we are always catching up with it. Flu vaccination, despite the fact that the virus is always one step ahead of us, is a very successful intervention.”
Reflecting on the devastating impact of the second and third Covid waves, Dr McCaughey said opportunities were missed in the summer which could have prevented spiralling cases and deaths.
“Everyone I spoke to in terms of public health, modelling and in terms of virology testing – we were expecting something like what happened would happen.
“I think many politicians and members of public went the other way where they thought. ‘we’ve got this out of the way’. I think there was a window there that we missed.
“The problem is that success looks like a gross over-reaction. The only way to get so many people on board is to have people dying. It’s an awful way to characterise it but it’s true. If we ended up having a picture that looked like Norway or Finland, people would say we didn’t need to do all of this.”
Despite the devastation caused by the pandemic, Dr McCaughey added that the impact of social distancing, mask wearing and strict hand hygiene had been enormous in preventing the spread of other contagious viruses – including winter flu.
“As a virologist this has been the most extraordinary winter because we’ve got no influenza whatsoever. In my whole career, working as a virologist since 1991, we’ve never had a winter with no flu. There was no flu in the northern hemisphere.
“Every year we get lots of admissions to the Children’s Hospital in Belfast with bronchial illnesses, but that’s not really happening. Basically all the changes may not have been perfect for flowing Covid, but a lot of viruses we see every year aren’t there.
“These social changes to our lives have had a massive impact – but unfortunately it does underline just how effective this pandemic virus is at transmitting. It’s transmitting in an environment where other viruses can’t do what they normally do on an annual basis.”
— to www.irishnews.com
