france india and saudi arabia are among
about 30 countries lining up to impose
bans on travelers from the uk as britain
battles a mutated strain of coronavirus
that is said to be much
more contagious uk ports and airports
have been thrown into chaos leaving the
country effectively cut off from
continental europe
entry denied trucks headed from england
to the european mainland force to turn
back after alarms were raised over the
new coronavirus strain
the channel crossing to france is a
crucial trade route
truck drivers and their goods now
stranded
i am to go spanish
but closing today
this is kitchen my kitchen this is what
you have to live off for the next two
days
yeah i will make here eating or anything
or coffee like this travel at london's
heathrow airport was
also disrupted with some passengers left
in limbo
i'm confused at this time
basically when i arrived here on 14th
december
situation situation is totally different
it's hard time here it's really putting
a
constraint on a lot of people but
i think overall we're all just waiting
on the opening up of
all of the countries you know in that
sense to see our family and get back
together
the new covid strain has already been
detected in mainland europe and
as far away as australia experts say the
newly developed vaccines should still
protect
against the mutation
let's take a closer look at this
mutation with john campbell he's an
independent health analyst and educator
and joins us from carlisle in the north
of england
uh welcome to dw um it's in the nature
of viruses to
mutate so why is this mutation got
authorities so exercised
well they noticed that this mutation or
this variant form of the virus
was more prevalent in areas where there
is an increase in
incidence of the virus generally so in
london and the southeast for example
there was an escalation of cases
and they found out that this virus was
correlated with that
escalation in cases and then this went
to port and down and importing down the
biological biological institute in the
uk
they did some lab-based tests where the
culture of the virus and they have human
cell cultures quite sophisticated
experiments
and the conclusion from their work was
that this virus is more this this
variant of the virus
is more transmissible so we seem to have
a virus which is more transmissible
than the previous forms of this virus
this is still the size corona virus too
of course it's just a new variant
but about 70 percent we think 70 percent
more contagious
and that increases the transmissibility
by about by about
0.4 or to 0.8 something like that so
it's quite a significant increase in the
degree to which the virus can be
transmitted around
and what that means is that if the virus
has a particular biological
tendency to to be transmitted we have to
be even
more rigorous with our precautions with
our hands face
space ventilation measures because the
virus is that bit easier to catch
so i think that's why people are worried
about it there is evidence that it's
more transmissible
so more contagious does that necessarily
mean it's more deadly
it certainly doesn't mean that the the
particular mutation on this virus is
called the n501y
now that is the 501st amino acid on this
spike
protein and that affects what's called
the receptor binding domain where it
actually fits
into the receptor cell to cause the
infection so we know it's a specific
part of the virus which is specifically
adapted to fitting into the receptor
cell
it doesn't seem to be affecting anything
else in the virus itself
so it's an increase in transmissibility
and as well as that when we look at the
epidemiology
yes there's more people admitted to
hospital in area where this mutation
is but that's because there's greater
numbers of the virus all together
so the virus does not seem to have a
greater pathogenicity
in in this variant it seems to cause
disease is the same as the other virus
but it spreads and more people get sick
all at the same time is the problem
and we've only just started to vaccinate
people um
i know that vaccinations have begun in
the uk
already are we happy that these vaccines
will still
work against this mutant strain
it's a remarkably good question now the
vaccines work in different ways
especially a vaccine like the oxford
vaccine which we're looking at at the
moment is probably going to be
accredited soon
and we have research the reason i'm
quoting the oxford vaccine is we have
peer-reviewed publications on that
whereas the pfizer and the modern were
more going by press releases
but we know that the oxford vaccine will
stimulate these neutralizing antibodies
now they may be partly affected because
the neutralizing antibodies stick onto
the spike protein
so it's possible they'll be partly
affected but the the vaccine also
generates agglutinating antibodies
that clump a lot of the viruses together
and the vaccine also stimulates
cellular immunity which is probably even
more important
than antibody immunity so it stimulates
a group of cells called natural
killer cells which will kill virally
infected cells
it stimulates a group of cells called t
cytotoxic cells which again
kill virally infected cells and it also
stimulates
cells that eat the virus called
phagocytic cells
such as macrophages and neutrophils so
it's attacking the virus in many
different ways
so it might have a minimal effect on one
aspect of immunity but the vaccine is
still going to work overall because it's
the vaccine is
boosting immunity in so many different
ways
so so now we have a situation where
countries all over the world are
banning flights from the uk um is that
likely to be effective i mean is it is
it already
out there this virus was definitely
identified on the 20th of september
now alarm bells weren't particularly
wrong at that time because this
n501 mutation was just one of actually
12
000 mutations that this virus has been
documented to have had since it left
wuhan way back in
january and the start of the year so it
wasn't particularly worrisome that there
was this new mutation
but um but um so what was the question
phil
the question was was about uh a
country's
um uh banning flight from the uk is that
likely to be
effective yeah yeah yeah so so because
it's already
been around from the 20th september you
have the end of september all of october
all of november and into december to
spread around the world
so we know it's spread around all parts
of the uk
we know it's all over wales for example
the prevalence isn't that high yet
but it's also in scotland and we know
for sure it's spread to denmark
the netherlands and australia and it may
well have spread to other countries now
i strongly suspect the robert
institutes and the
centers for disease control in the
united states are frantically doing
genomic analysis as we speak to see if
that
the variant is already there i i suspect
it it's certainly a real risk that it
could be all right good talking to you
as ever thank you so much that's very
clear john campbell independent health
analyst
thank you well the