The UK has chosen a dangerous path out of the coronavirus pandemic
HEALTH | LEADER 28 July 2021
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DURING the coronavirus pandemic, we have all become amateur epidemiologists, readily discussing R numbers, herd immunity and test sensitivity in everyday conversation. Now, with the virus still nowhere near eliminated, we would do well to concern ourselves with the principles of viral evolution too.
It is a widespread misconception that viruses tend to evolve to become less deadly. To really grasp what a virus is likely to do, we must look at the opportunities it has to evolve and the selection pressures that could force it to change.
In these respects, the
UK has stumbled into a dangerous realm. Its high infection numbers provide ample chance for evolutionary experimentation, while high-but-not-yet-high-enough levels of vaccination could prove a strong driver for new “escape variants” that can better evade the immune responses stimulated by infection or vaccination.
After the hope generated by the arrival of multiple effective covid-19 vaccines, this prospect is almost too dreadful to contemplate. We have already seen more transmissible variants sweep their way to dominance. Even if its case rate
does prove to be falling, with large amounts of the virus circulating when many people are only partially immune, the UK is providing ample opportunity for the virus to experiment with new ways to evade our immune systems.
The UK isn’t the only country setting itself up as a breeding ground for new variants. So is every nation with high infection numbers, particularly those with many partially vaccinated people.
The hope that vaccines will still protect against severe illness, and that booster shots could upgrade immune responses to new variants, is of comfort only to wealthier countries. More than 86 per cent of the global population isn’t yet fully vaccinated. Those nations that will be most harmed by new variants are those that have already lost out due to richer countries’ vaccine nationalism.
For the sake of the speediest possible end to this pandemic, every country has a duty now to think beyond its borders. That means taking whatever measures necessary to keep cases low.