[A South African tip led to the discovery of
mutations around the world. With infections skyrocketing, “it’s a race against
time.”]
By Matt Apuzzo, Selam Gebrekidan and Apoorva Mandavilli
“Is this a different strain?” one
hospital official asked in a group email in early November, raising the
possibility that the virus had developed a dangerous mutation.
That question touched off a
high-stakes genetic investigation that began here in Durban on the Indian
Ocean, tipped off researchers in Britain and is now taking place around the
world. Scientists have discovered worrisome new variants of the virus, leading
to border closures, quarantines and lockdowns, and dousing some of the
enthusiasm that arrived with the vaccines.
Britain has been particularly
overwhelmed. Infections and hospitalizations have skyrocketed in
recent weeks since that country discovered its own variant of the virus, which
is more contagious than previous forms. By one estimate, the mutated virus is
already responsible for more than 60 percent of new infections in London and
surrounding areas.
The coronavirus has evolved as it
made its way across the world, as any virus is expected to do. But experts have
been startled by the pace at which significant new variants have emerged,
adding new urgency to the race between the world’s best defenses — vaccinations,
lockdowns and social distancing — and an aggressive, ever-changing foe.
The new variant pummeling Britain
has already been found in about 45
countries, from Singapore to Oman to Jamaica, but many countries are
effectively flying blind, with little sense of how bad the problem may be.
Long before the pandemic emerged,
public health officials were calling for routine genetic surveillance of
outbreaks. But despite years of warnings, many countries — including
the United States — are conducting only a fraction of the genomic
studies needed to determine how prevalent mutations of the virus are.
Denmark, which has invested in
genetic surveillance, discovered the variant afflicting Britain in multiple
Danish regions and recently tightened restrictions. The health minister compared
it to a storm surge, predicting that it would dominate other variants by
mid-February.
And as countries go looking, they
are discovering other variants, too.
With the world stumbling
in its vaccination rollout and the number of cases steeply rising to
peaks that exceed those seen last spring, scientists see a pressing need to
immunize as many people as possible before the virus evolves enough to render
the vaccines impotent.
“It’s a race against time,”
said Marion Koopmans, a Dutch virologist and a member of a World
Health Organization working group on coronavirus adaptations.
The vaccine alone will not be
enough to get ahead of the virus: It will take years to inoculate enough people
to limit its evolution. In the meantime, social distancing, mask-wearing and
hand-washing — coupled with aggressive testing, tracking and tracing — might
buy some time and avert devastating spikes in hospitalizations and deaths along
the way. These strategies could still turn the tide against the virus, experts
said.
“We do know how to dial down the
transmission of the virus by a lot with our behavior,” said Carl T. Bergstrom,
an evolutionary biologist at the University of Washington in Seattle. “We’ve
got a lot of agency there.”
Yet in the course of the pandemic,
governments have often proven reluctant or unable to galvanize support for
those basic defenses. Many countries have all but given up on tracking and
tracing. Mask-wearing remains politically charged in the United States, despite
clear evidence of its efficacy. Cities like Los Angeles have been gripped by a
spike in cases linked
to Christmas festivities, and national public health officials are bracing
for surges elsewhere, driven by people who ignored advice and traveled
during the holidays.
Much remains unknown about the new
variants, or even how many are sprouting worldwide. Scientists are racing to
sequence enough of the virus to know, but only a handful of countries have the
wherewithal or commitment to do so with any regularity.
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The rapid spread of the new
variants is a reminder of the failings and missteps of major countries to
contain the virus earlier. Just as China failed to stop travelers from
spreading the virus before the Lunar New Year last year, Britain has failed to
move fast enough ahead of the new variant’s spread. Britain lowered its guard
during the holidays, despite a rise in cases now known to be linked to a
variant. And just as China became a pariah early on in the pandemic, Britain
now has the unfortunate distinction of being called Plague
Island.
The spread of the variant lashing
Britain has left some countries vulnerable at a time when they seemed on the
brink of scientific salvation.
A case in point: Israel. The
country, which had launched a remarkably successful vaccine rollout, tightened
its lockdown on Friday after having discovered cases of the variant. About
8,000 new infections have been detected daily in recent days, and the rate of
spread in ultra-Orthodox communities has increased drastically.
A Hodgepodge of Responses
The variant discovered in Britain,
known as B.1.1.7, has 23 mutations that differ from the earliest known version
of the virus in Wuhan, China, including one or more that make it more
contagious, and at least one that slightly weakens the vaccines’ potency. Some
experiments suggest that the variant spreads more easily because mutations enable
it to latch more successfully onto a person’s airway.
Dr. Bergstrom and other scientists
were surprised to see this more transmissible variant emerge, given that the
coronavirus was already quite adept at infecting people.
