BRUSSELS - Belgium has identified a case of the 'nu' Covid variant, first identified in southern Africa, with laboratories in the country increasing their vigilance to catch the potentially more transmissible strain.
British Health Secretary Javid said there are no United Kingdom (UK) cases of the new coronavirus variant, found in South Africa, Botswana, Hong Kong and Israel, but that the Government is concerned it could "pose a substantial risk to public health".
Some of us were beginning to whisper that it felt like things were returning to normal. Yet today Europe has its first case of a new variant of coronavirus that Health Secretary Sajid Javid told the Commons has become a "huge international concern".
Of all the variants so far, B.1.1.529 is causing the most alarm. And with good reason.
Britain’s Professor Adam Finn, a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), has warned that the public need to be ready for a change in Covid restrictions.
The "omicron" variant, as it was named on Friday by the World Health Organisation, has an eye-watering number of mutations, many of which could help it dodge immunity, or make it more infectious.
Since delta, there have been eight other variants named after letters of the Greek alphabet by the organisation, but none have triggered this much worry.
When Dr Tom Peacock, a virologist at Imperial College London, spotted the mutations in the sequence data earlier this week, he labelled them “horrific” and “really awful”.
“I would take a guess that this would be worse antigenically than nearly anything else about,” he said.
‘Causing real concern
One senior UK health official said that the spike protein on the omicron variant was “so dramatically different” that it was “causing real concern”, although there are currently no cases in Britain and it has not yet been classified as a variant of concern.
“It is the worst variant I have seen so far. We have protein experts and virologists who are all extremely concerned,” the official said.
The variant has about 50 mutations, with 30 in the spike protein and 10 in the receptor binding motif, the part that binds to our cell receptor called ACE2, which is greater than any other mutated strain.
Spike proteins are little grappling hooks on the surface of the virus which it uses to latch on to human cells.
Changes to the spike protein are particularly concerning because vaccines have been designed to help the body recognise the spike shape. If they change too much, the immune system will be blind to an infection.
Put simply, vaccines would stop working and all our hard won protection would be lost.
Antibodies made by the body from a natural infection may also struggle to see off this new interloper.
There are also mutations at the furin cleavage site, which is alarming as this is an area that helps the virus get into human cells, and which makes it so infectious.
One mutation, P681H, has previously been found in alpha, mu and some gamma cases. But this is the first time that two changes have been seen in a single variant.
These changes are likely to enhance the virus’s ability to enter cells, increasing viral load and making it more transmissible.
There are also two mutations in an area called the nucleocapsid, R203K and G204R, which were present in the alpha, gamma and lambda variants, and are known to increase infectivity.
As if this were not enough, there are also several changes that have never been seen before, which are also alarming scientists.
‘More of a hit on vaccines than anything we’ve seen so far’
Dr Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle, said that many mutations, particularly E484, G446, K417 and Q493, were at “peak escape sites”, meaning that many antibodies would be impacted.
Aside from the theoretical science of why it could be more infectious and dangerous, real world data is also suggesting that omicron could cause serious problems.
The threat level currently remains low, but senior health sources said there was a “high risk” of importations, which is expected to rise in the coming weeks as the virus spreads more widely.
Health officials are now watching reinfection data closely to see how many people are being infected from each case. That will give an indication of how much more transmissible it is.
It will be several more weeks or months before we know if it is also more deadly.
Fears of a new coronavirus variant rocked global stock markets. US oil prices slumped 10pc to just above $70 a barrel, while benchmark Brent crude dropped more than 9 per cent to below $75.
