 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today, we are discussing what's happening on the COVID-19 front, particularly as we now have the reports of a new mutation that seems to have taken place, or a set of mutations that have taken place. India has also crossed the 10 million number of COVID-19 infections last week. So we are one of the largest in the world. And of course, we are not still on the scale of the United States, which is well ahead of us. But the virus mutation raises issues that how effective our vaccines will be, if and when they're available in India. And we are going to discuss both these aspects, the mutation, the increasing transfer that seems to be taking, transmission that seems to be taking place, and what are the possible impact it might have on our vaccines. Saty, to start with, the question that this seems to be causing some alarm, that this is what would be called the transmission rate seems to be significantly higher in this mutation, or sets of mutations, because it seems to be not one mutation, but a set of mutations. So quick question, two questions in one. One is, what is this mutation that is taking place, set of mutations that is taking place? And the transmission rate, how high is it? Is it really confirmed? And is it something that we should really worry about? Yeah, so as you point out, this is not one mutation in the sense of one isolated change that we are talking about. We're talking about a whole range of changes through the entire gene set of the virus, all its many different genes. So there are things that we must remember not to get banyky about. So let me go over those first. And then we might want to talk about the interesting science involved in the variant virus, which let's call it. So firstly, this is not a more virulent form of the virus. There is no evidence whatsoever. There isn't even any speculative basis for thinking that this variant is going to cause more serious disease. That means even if people get infected, it will not put them in much larger numbers in ICUs and so on. That part of it seems to be same as what the current infections are. That is one part of it. So that's one part. The second part is that at the moment we have no clear evidence that the changes in this variant virus are actually biologically meaningful that they are functional in any sense. The entire abundance of caution response that is being seen worldwide is driven based on correlations. So what is the correlation needs to be remembered? The correlation is that a couple of months ago in Britain, this variant seemed to account for about a quarter of the infections in southeastern England. More recently, it seems to account for almost two thirds of those infections. This is subject to statistical error because everything is not being sequenced even though the United Kingdom has one of the world's best sequencing records in the sense that they actually sequenced the entire virus gene set of many more isolates than most other places in the world, most other countries in the world. It's still 5% or so of the total infections. So by no means are these terribly statistically reliable but because this particular variant has grown in prominence over time, grown in relative prominence in the community over time and this is being taken as a correlative evidence for the possibility that it spreads more rapidly. Quick interjection here. So about 25% say or 20, 25% say two months back, it's now about 60%, roughly 60% in southeastern England. That's what we're really talking about. And therefore the possibility that if this is spreading faster than others that it therefore its transmissibility would be more. That's the broad argue. So clearly it has increased in prominence. This increase in relative prominence could simply be accidental because social behavior and accidental events simply happened to involve this particular strain. That formally remains possible but it's also possible that it is because it's a little bit more transmissible. And that second possibility of a biological transmissibility increase is supported by at least a couple of the changes in this variant. At least one of these changes involves the binding to cells, the virus protein, the spike protein that allows the virus particle to stick to cells and to infect it. And there is evidence that the change that has taken place actually increases binding efficiency. Whether that increase in binding efficiency is deeply meaningful in real life or not is not yet clear, but it lends plausibility and credits. But being more transmissible does not mean being able to cause more severe disease at all. But it does mean the rate of infection that means my ability to infect others could be a little more if I'm infected myself. Correct. So let me put this in black and white terms. What this means is at the level of individual risk assessment, nothing changes. At the level of community risk assessment, from the point of view of public policy, we need to be a little more cautious, a little more careful, and so on and so forth. Because what is increasing is the likelihood if all of these guesses are correct, the likelihood that per week there will be more cases. And if that happens, then the healthcare systems will get that much put under strain. So public policy needs to worry. But individuals don't need to worry is thinking that, oh, this has become a much more derelent strain. No. So the real issue is, of course, when it comes to pandemic or epidemic control, this has consequences right now. This is consequential, although I repeat, we're still talking about early days of analysis and this is still all guesswork, but within those limits, there ought to be an abundance of caution. Should therefore we be banning all flights from Britain, all trucks from Britain for a 48-hour window, that sounds more like a panic response than a well-thought-through response. But yeah, the figures are, of course, if we look at it in black and white, sound a little frightening. 70% increase in transposibility could be there is some of the figures we are seeing. Not enough basis to say that, but that doesn't stop people from making guess debates of some kind. So two quick points on that score. One is, there's actually no basis for the 70% number in any meaningful fashion at all. Secondly, 70% increase in transmissibility is one way of saying it. Another way of saying it, it's not even a two-fold increase in transmissibility. It's a 1.7-fold increase in transmissibility. So let's all... Instead of infecting 12 people, if 10 people get infected, they infect another 12 people, instead of then they infect about 17, 18 people, basically the way to look at it. So, but as you put it, the 70% increase sounds a little more frightening than the way you're putting it. So that, of course, as you know, immediately people have now got accustomed to understanding what a GP series is or an exponential increase is, and so on and so forth. So that's really, 50% increase, 70% increase, immediately start thinking of an explosion because it leads to exponential growth, which it would if all other contributory factors were not taken into account. And also the fact that people are not going to get infected again and again. You know, the thing, of course, that you've talked about is that it does cause a problem for the public health system and both in say, for example, if it hits California at this moment, there are some of the places over there are to the last ICU beds, that's the report we seem to see. UK, parts of it may still be under stressed condition, the public health system over there. So public health-wise, there is still cause for concern. Coming back- Absolutely, yes. But- Yeah, sorry. The distinction I'm trying to make that, and as you know, we've been trying to make this distinction for eight months of individual risk assessment and community risk assessment. And this is yet one more example of precisely that. So 50% or a 60% increase in transmissibility, if your ICU's are already stressed or your hospitals are already stressed, would get into a serious crisis or a much more serious crisis. And that's the risk that you carry. But if your hospitals are functioning with lots of spare capacity, then the risk involvement will be minor. Yes, of course, number of deaths would go up statistically because when you deal with large numbers, it would still matter. Coming back to the issue, which is also worrying people, that, and you said that we really don't have too much evidence of this, the question is that lot of the vaccines have targeted the spike protein, because that's the part which seems to be causing the infection that, you know, it binds to the ACE2 receptor. So it sort of sticks very easily and therefore, of course, the disease itself. But will the, since the vaccines have targeted precisely the spike protein, is it likely that the vaccines will not be so effective? Yeah, so that's the other thing that I think much more anxiety is being expressed than is warranted at the moment. So let me explain three categories of changes that have taken place in this variant. The variant has a very catchy name. Have you noticed? The variant is called, really, very catchily, V-U-I-20-20-0-1-1-2. You have a good memory. So, you know, biologists are great at coming up with memorable names for their organisms. Anyway, so this variant has, as I said, one change that seems to increase its efficiency of binding to the cellular target. Another change removes a couple of amino acids from the protein. And there is some evidence that that change has been seen independently in other situations where the virus seems to have mutated in a single individual under immune pressure. And that's the only reason at this point why people are anxious that that two amino acid change may mean that this virus is no longer susceptible to the immune response generated by vaccines. At the moment, there is no really good reason to think that there are good reasons not to think it. So, eventually, are we going to start meeting immune evading virus variants? Yes, we are. Have we started meeting them already? Not so far. So, at the moment, I don't think that this variant should be causing us particularly serious anxiety. We are still waiting on data, but it should not be causing us serious anxiety about its being immune-intensive. Impervious to a vaccine. So, chances, and again, of course, we cannot talk of definitives in the case of biology unlike physics, the chances are, and in this vaccines, the virus being impervious on immune to vaccines, these chances are very low at the moment unless we see something radically different in the future. Now, last question to you, and I'm sorry for getting into more and more into biology for my viewers. You know, the question that still remains that generally the mutation that takes place in the virus, or we have seen in this virus, is one or two locations. We have heard that the virus doesn't evolve or change as quickly as, for instance, the flu virus does and so on. But here, we seem to see 17 changes in one particular variant, which is the largest change that we seem to see in a variant from all others. Now, wouldn't it be that this shows that there is something else that we have to worry about, that large chunks can be interchanged, or is it somebody was immune compromised, this sort of evolved within that person for a long time? And I know that this is a bit of a fiction writing for you which you are unwilling to do generally. But what suddenly lead to this large number of changes in one particular variant? So it's interesting that if you read the paper, there is only one paper on this variant and even that is actually, but anyway, there's a proper report. And that report, the scientists at the COVID-19 Genomics Consortium UK who are reporting this have spent as much time enthusiastically speculating on the issue that you point to as they have in enthusiastically speculating on the consequences of these changes. So they are talking about the genesis of the changes and the consequences of the changes with equal enthusiasm as Bifid's biologists. So the fact of the matter is that if a virus comes into my body, depending on the number of generations it goes through in my body, it will accumulate that many changes or the population will accumulate that many changes. So if it's an acute infection, it comes in, it spends a few days, I get rid of it, whatever it transmits, transmits but otherwise it's all gone, there's only a few changes. As a result, speculatively we say that that means that if I find a variant that has suddenly seemingly undergone a lot of changes, then it must have spent a long time in one individual. Now this is subject to a peculiar caveat. Remember I told you that even in Britain only about 5% of the virus isolates are being sequenced. So it remains formally possible that even this virus is the outcome of a lot of other in between steps that are out there that we just haven't found. So you can make a statistical calculation and say that it's less likely and so on and so forth but we should keep that in mind and that the nature of the evidence is indirect. But within the individual therefore, because the virus is going through many generations, it is now subject to selection pressures within that one individual. And that's where quite a few of the immune escapes might be generated because in an individual that is neither dying of the virus, nor clearing the virus, there is an uneasy balance of there is some pressure on the virus but not enough to kill it off, which is fertile ground for selective selected virus variants to emerge and to be transmitted. And that's why that speculation is biologically interesting. Okay, so as you can see what interest biologists are not the things that interest us because we get afraid of such things but well that's their profession as opposed to ours. So for them, we are the subject material just as much the viruses are. So Satyajit, thanks for sharing this insights with us. I think we are going to spend a couple of anxious weeks following what are the things that happen and particularly looking more closely at the nature of the transmission as well as its possible repercussions regarding will it make us more sick, which you have very strongly refuted? Will it have any effect on the vaccines? Most probably no and so on. So I think more grounds to continue our conversation with you and of course with our viewers. Thank you very much for being with us sharing your deep understanding of rather esoteric processes going in our bodies and in the viruses. This is all the time we have for NewsClick today. Do keep watching NewsClick and do see our discussions on COVID-19 and all the issues that are coming up with respect to that.