May 20, 2021

expert comment on current state of B.1.617 ‘India’ variant in the UK

A comment from Professor Steven Riley on the current state of the B.1.617 variant in the UK.

Prof Steven Riley, Professor of Infectious Disease Dynamics at Imperial College London, said: 

“We know that there were a large number of importation events of the B.1.167 variant just prior to travel being restricted between the UK and India, and it’s generated lots of clusters and clusters of different sizes. It does look like in some places it’s replacing the old ‘Kent’ variant, B.1.1.7. That’s all we know. What we don’t yet know is exactly how much more transmissible it might be.

“We’ve got quite a few really reliable data streams in the UK. I work on the REACT study, where we look at infections, we’ve got really good case data, and then we get a really quick look at hospitalizations. Across those three, in the next two-to-three weeks, we’re going to get a really clear signal of how we expect cases and hospitalizations to progress.

“I’m not sure that in the traditional sense we will contain the B.1.617 variant. It looks like it is replacing the previous strain and at the moment we’re not going for COVID-Zero policy in the UK. It does look like we’re going to have some local transmission of this strain, but it’s really a question of how fast that transmission is and how strong it is, and whether it creates a large wave or not.

“It’s a race between vaccination and transmission of the virus. This new variant, B.1.617, gives the advantage back a little bit to the virus, I think most people would suspect. So I would expect infections to go up in the next round of the REACT study.” 

See the full interview from Imperial’s MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis on Twitter
https://twitter.com/MRC_Outbreak/status/1395318648932380673

Details of the REACT study can be found on the Imperial College London website

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/medicine/research-and-impact/groups/react-study/

Previously issued comments on this topic:

18/05/2021 Comment on current situation and B.1.617.2 variant: https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-comments-about-the-current-situation-and-the-b-1-617-2-indian-variant/

15/05/2021 Friday’s SAGE papers on the B.1.617.2 variant and other VOCs: https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-latest-batch-of-sage-papers-released-on-the-b-1-617-2-variant-and-other-vocs/

14/05/2021 Downing Street Press Conference on the B.1.617.2 variant: https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-latest-downing-street-press-conference-on-the-b-1-617-2-variant-indian-variant/

All our previous output on this subject can be seen at this weblink:

www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/covid-19

Declared interests

None received.