UK, Israel seeing rise in Delta plus Covid variant
Darpan News Desk IANS, 20 Oct, 2021 11:09 AM
The UK and Israel are witnessing a surge in Covid-19 infections due to a new descendant of the Delta variant AY.4.2, also called the "Delta Plus" variant.
While Delta is the UK's dominant variant, AY.4.2 delta sublineage is currently increasing in frequency. It includes spike mutations A222V and Y145H, which might give the virus survival advantages, according to the latest report from the UK Health Security Agency.
AY.4.2 delta "sublineage accounted for approximately 6 per cent of all sequences generated, on an increasing trajectory", the report said.
"Delta remains the predominant variant... a Delta sublineage newly-designated as AY.4.2 is noted to be expanding in England. It is now a signal in monitoring and assessment has commenced," it added.
Although tests are underway to understand how much of a threat this Delta sub-variant may pose, experts say it is unlikely to take off in a big way or escape current vaccines, the BBC reported.
"It is potentially a marginally more infectious strain. It is nothing compared with what we saw with Alpha and Delta, which were something like 50 to 60 per cent more transmissible. So we are talking about something quite subtle here and that is currently under investigation," Prof. Francois Balloux, director of University College London's Genetics Institute, was quoted as saying to BBC.
"It is likely to be up to 10 per cent more transmissible," he added.
The British government is keeping a "very close eye" on rising levels of Covid-19 infections, Prime Minister Boris Johnson's spokesperson said on Tuesday.
On Sunday, Scott Gottlieb, a former US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner, called for research into the sub-variant.
"UK reported its biggest one-day Covid-19 case increase in three months just as the new delta variant AY.4 with the S:Y145H mutation in the spike reaches eight per cent of UK sequenced cases," he wrote on Twitter.
"There's no clear indication that it is considerably more transmissible, but we should work to more quickly characterise these and other new variants. We have the tools," he added.
However, Balloux said that "at this stage, there is no need to panic. It might be slightly, subtly more transmissible but it is not something absolutely disastrous like we saw previously".
In Israel, an 11-year-old boy returning from Moldova to the country has been identified as Covid-19 positive, carrying the novel Delta variant AY4.2, the only recorded case in Israel of the new strand of the coronavirus, the Jerusalem Post reported.
The child was tested in Ben-Gurion Airport upon his arrival and has since been in self-isolation, the Health Ministry said on Tuesday.
One study tracked over 600,000 COVID-19 cases in 13 states from April through mid-July. As delta surged in early summer, those who were unvaccinated were 4.5 times more likely than the fully vaccinated to get infected, over 10 times more likely to be hospitalized and 11 times more likely to die, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
He had been injured in a shootout between a passenger in his car and the teenager who was also injured in the exchange of fire and remained hospitalised, the station said.
The searing parallels that bookend the two decades — shaken commanders-in-chief promising retribution for a devastating suicide attack; triumphant Taliban militants in Afghanistan and a military transport fleeing Kabul — might suggest little has changed. Of course, since Sept. 11, virtually everything has.
Mu, also known as B.1.621, was first identified from Colombia in January this year. Infections from Mu have since been recorded in South America and Europe. Based on the latest round of assessments, B.1.621 was classified as a VOI on 30 August 2021 and given the WHO label "Mu".
The militant group's metamorphosis from rag-tag guerrilla force to highly professional, impressively equipped army has been at the expense of Western taxpayers, the report said.
"Russia should be concerned about the rise of the Taliban. The country will become a terrorist hub that will endanger Central Asia and Russia itself," Fahim Dashty told The Moscow Times by phone from the Panjshir Valley, where his resistance group has gathered as the country's last holdout against the Taliban.
