March 23, 2021

expert reaction to New York variant B.1.526 having been sequenced three times in the UK, according to PANGO lineages

It has been reported that three cases of the coronavirus variant first detected in New York have been found in the UK.

Prof Wendy Barclay, Action Medical Research Chair Virology, and Head of Department of Infectious Disease, Imperial College London, said:

“Only a subset of the B.1.526 (aka New York variant) lineage contain E484K.

“There are 3 UK sequences from this lineage but none are from the E484K containing branch and therefore likely do not pose much of a threat (at least compared to the Brazilian/P.1 or South Africa/B.1.351 lineages).”

https://cov-lineages.org/lineages/lineage_B.1.526.html

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

www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/covid-19

Declared interests

None received.