A Brazilian coronavirus variant that is feared could reinfect survivors is already in the UK and has been here for ‘some time’, a leading scientist confirmed today.
Professor Wendy Barclay, who is head of a new Government-led research unit studying Covid mutations, said the strain was probably introduced to the UK ‘some time ago’.
The Imperial College London virologist revealed the strain spotted in the UK is not the strain that emerged in the Brazilian city of Manaus and was first detected in people traveling to Japan.
Instead, it is a very similar variant that scientists believe is causing cases to skyrocket nationally in Brazil. Both strains share a mutation on their spike proteins which make them more infectious and may help them get past immunity from vaccines and older versions of the virus.
It’s not clear yet when the first case of the Brazilian variant was spotted in the UK, but MailOnline understands it could have been as far back as November.
Professor Barclay told a briefing this morning: ‘There are two different types of Brazilian variants. One of them has been detected [in the UK] and one of them has not.
‘In the databases, if you search the sequences, you will see that there is some evidence for variants from around the world, and I believe including the Brazilian one, which probably was introduced some time ago.’
Later in the afternoon, she clarified that it was not the strain ravaging Manaus, adding: ‘Other variants that may have originated from Brazil have been previously found [in the UK].’
It comes despite Public Health England claiming as recently as yesterday it had not spotted any cases of a Brazilian strain. Earlier this morning, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps also said he was ‘not aware’ of any cases.
A Brazilian coronavirus variant that is feared could reinfect survivors is already in the UK and has been here for ‘some time’, a leading scientist confirmed today (stock image)
All three of the mutated versions of the coronavirus found in recent weeks – the ones from Kent, South Africa and Brazil – have had a change on the spike protein of the virus called N501Y, which scientists say makes it better able to latch onto the body and spread
Professor Wendy Barclay, from Imperial College London, revealed there were two different types of Brazilian variants, and that only one had been spotted in Britain
MailOnline understands Brazilian strain entered the UK in November and may have been spotted in seven British people already.
It was believed to have been picked up by routine testing, which sees random samples sent to the Government’s Lighthouse labs to be analysed by genomic sequencers tracking the evolution of coronavirus.
However, it can weeks or even months for the swabs to be processed in laboratories, put through the sequencing process and added to the national database.
For example, the Kent strain of the virus which triggered Britain’s winter wave was tracked back to a patient in Kent in September. But it was only actually detected and announced in December.
Up until today, it was thought there was only one Brazilian variant. Both variants fall under the B.1.1.28 lineage of SARS-CoV-2, the strain of coronavirus that causes Covid.
Scientists tracking the constantly-evolving pathogen say they have very subtle differences that make them genetically different – but both carry a mutation on the crucial spike protein.
The genetic mutation, called E484K, changes the shape of the spike protein on the outside of the virus in a way that might make it less recognisable to an immune system trained to spot versions of the virus that don’t have the mutation, scientists say.
E484K is thought to change the virus in a way which makes it more difficult for antibodies to bind to it and prevent it entering the body.
Antibodies are a part of the immune system that can cripple viruses or attach to them and flag them up as targets for other killer white blood cells.
In this case, the part of the spike protein that gets changed is called the ‘receptor binding domain’, or the RBD, which the virus uses to latch onto the body.
The strain that emerged in Manaus was first detected by the Japanese during routine tests of arriving passengers in Tokyo.
It was discovered in four Brazilians who landed at Haneda airport on January 2, all of whom had recently come from Manaus or other parts of Amazonas, which has a landmass six times the size of the UK.
That variant is believed to have evolved in the Manaus population as a way to get around ‘herd immunity’ in the city, according to Professor Barclay.
Studies have suggested that around 70 per cent of people in Manaus, situated in the heart of the Amazon rainforest, caught Covid-19 during the first wave of the virus in spring.
This may have put evolutionary pressure on the regular Covid strain to adapt to be able to slip past natural immunity to the original version, Professor Barclay said.
It may explain why, despite the majority of the 2million people of Manaus having natural immunity, the city is suffering an explosive second wave of the disease.
There have been reports of dead bodies having to be dumped in freezer trucks and patients being flown to different states due to a chronic shortage of oxygen and hospital beds.
Researchers say Manaus is particularly vulnerable to Covid because it has high levels of social deprivation, with workers living in crowded, multi-generational housing. It is also a free-trade zone and one of Brazil’s largest exporter cities, with frequent traffic from Europe and Asia.
Because the virus naturally mutates as it jumps between people, Manaus provided the perfect breeding ground for the virus to evolve.
Not much is known about the Brazilian strain already in the UK, but it is thought to be behind the surge in cases nationally in the South American nation.
Professor Barclay suggested this mutation occurred separately, elsewhere in Brazil, in an area with high prevalence which allowed it to transmit freely between people and rapidly evolve.
In response to the Manaus variant, Britain banned all travel from South America, Portugal, Panama and Cape Verde in a bid to stop it from wreaking havoc in the UK. Officials here are already trying to bring the super-infectious Kent variant under control.
Asked if the Brazilian strain was in the UK now, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning: ‘Not as far as we are aware, I think, at this stage. There haven’t been any flights that I can see from the last week from Brazil, for example.’
Britain is now hoping to keep shut the variant out with its new South America travel ban which came into force at 4am this morning.
No-one who has been in any of the listed countries in the previous 10 days will be granted entry.
The measures are even wider than had been expected – although British and Irish nationals will not be subject to the total block, and must merely isolate for 10 days.
But scientists fear the measures have come too late. Dr Mike Tildesley, an epidemiologist at Warwick University, told BBC Breakfast: ‘We always have this issue with travel bans of course, that we’re always a little bit behind the curve.
‘With Covid we need to remember that when you develop symptoms you could have been infected up to a couple of weeks ago.
‘So it’s really important that these travel bans come in quickly so that we can prevent any risk.
‘My understanding is that there haven’t really been any flights coming from Brazil for about the past week, so hopefully the immediate travel ban should really minimise the risk.’
He added that scientists will know ‘in the next few days’ whether the ban has had ‘a significant effect’.
Dr Tildesley added that although viruses mutate ‘all the time’, this usually results in ‘milder forms’ emerging ‘in order to survive better’.
He told BBC Breakfast: ‘If you have a very transmissible virus that also has a very high mortality rate then actually – and this is not meant to be flippant at all – but that’s not very good for the survival of the virus in a sense, if it kills its host.’
He added that if a vaccine-resistant variant emerges, jabs can be modified within ‘weeks rather than months’ to combat this.
Dr Tildesley said: ‘Over the longer term, it’s probably likely that we will get variants emerging where the vaccines won’t necessarily have the same effect.
‘And I will say that’s nothing to get massively panicked about – we do expect this, and this is what happens with flu all the time, that we have to develop a vaccine every year to protect against whatever virus strain is circulating.’
Sir Patrick Vallance, the Government’s chief scientific adviser, assured the public yesterday that there was no evidence any of the variants led to more severe disease or could get around the immune system.
He told ITV’s Peston show: ‘There’s no evidence at all with any of these variants that it makes the disease itself more severe.
‘So the changes that we’re seeing with the variants are largely around increased transmission.
‘[There’s] no evidence yet for the UK version that it makes a difference in terms of how the immune system recognises it, and if you’ve been exposed to the old variant or you’ve had a vaccine, it looks like that’s gonna work just as well with this new variant for the UK one.
‘The South African one and Brazilian one, we don’t know for sure. There’s a bit more of a risk that this might make a change to the way the immune system recognises it but we don’t know. Those experiments are underway.’
Dr Simon Clarke, a microbiologist at the University of Reading, told MailOnline that even if the mutation did affect the immune system it wasn’t likely to scupper existing vaccines completely.
He said: ‘We know where the mutations are. I think it’s fair to say we don’t have a good picture on how easily it spreads or how quickly it spreads.
‘Some of the changes, not all, are in the spike protein. The only one we have good data on in terms of the ability to spread is the Kent strain.
‘The changes to the spike mean that they could make it more difficult for antibodies to bind to. If there is an effect, and it’s a big if, I would assume it would reduce their [vaccines] efficacy not abolish it, it wouldn’t render it useless but it might not be effective.’
Brazil ‘collapses’ under Covid as new variant sees epidemic surge: Relatives are forced to supply oxygen for patients, doctors decide who gets to breathe and Amazon’s largest city turns into a ‘suffocation chamber’
At one hospital in Manaus, a despairing relative carried an oxygen tank for his own mother-in-law just to help her breathe for another two hours – with one expert describing the city as a ‘suffocation chamber’.
Infections have soared to record levels in Brazil with the new variant feared to be the dominant strain in the state of Amazonas and described by one expert as ‘very probably’ more contagious than the previous type.
The variant has already been detected as far afield as Japan and spooked UK ministers into shutting down travel from the whole of South America, after another new strain was blamed for a dramatic surge in cases in Britain.
In Manaus, whose mass graves became a symbol of the first wave of the pandemic in Brazil, cemeteries are again burying record number of patients as the new strain causes a total ‘collapse’ of the healthcare system.
The virus was so rife during the first wave that one study suggested more than 70 per cent of Manaus’s population had been infected – raising fears that the new strain has evaded any immunity acquired from earlier infections.
In the latest outbreak, hundreds of patients are being airlifted to other states while some non-Covid sufferers are being evicted from their beds to make way for those in greater need.
Doctors and relatives have described ‘nightmare’ scenes of medical workers breaking down in tears. And with nearly 500 people still waiting for beds in Manaus, some elderly virus sufferers are being left to die at home.
Heartbreaking: Relatives of patients being treated at the 28 de Agosto hospital in Manaus share a tearful hug as the healthcare system in the Amazon’s largest city faces ‘collapse’ and a dire shortage of oxygen
Emergency: Healthcare workers transport a 77-year-old patient on a stretcher at a Manaus hospital after he came down with coronavirus symptoms, as a new strain which is feared to be more contagious spreads across the Amazon
Overwhelmed: Gravediggers wearing green and yellow hazmat suits bury a foil-wrapped coffin at the Nossa Senhora Aparecida cemetery in Manaus, with mourning relatives having to queue to bury their dead
A municipal healthcare worker covers the body of an 84-year-old Brazilian who died at home during the deadly outbreak
An oxygen cylinder is wheeled into the Getulio Vargas hospital amid drastic shortages of the substance needed to treat coronavirus patients suffering breathing problems
Cases in Brazil are at their highest level ever, with more than 360,000 in the last week alone, while the daily death rate is hovering around 1,000 for the first time since the first wave peaked in the Southern Hemisphere winter
As the oxygen crisis mounts, Brazil’s health minister Eduardo Pazuello said a plane full of medical supplies would arrive on Friday, followed by four others, but it was not clear whether this would be enough to fill the gap.
The city has ‘run out of oxygen and some health centers have become a type of suffocation chamber,’ said Jessem Orellana from the Fiocruz-Amazonia scientific investigation institute.
The oxygen provider in Manaus, White Martins, said it was considering diverting some of its supply from neighbouring Venezuela – while military personnel delivered 400 oxygen cylinders to Amazonas in five days.
At the Hospital Universitario Getulio Vargas, health workers took empty cylinders to the oxygen provider in the hope there would be some to retrieve.
Patients waited anxiously in the hospital as oxygen arrived in time to save some, but too late for others. In echoes of the worst days of the crisis in Europe, doctors were having to decide which patients to treat.
‘Yes, there is a collapse in the health care system in Manaus,’ the health minister said. ‘The line for beds is growing by a lot – we have 480 people waiting now. ‘We are starting to remove patients with less serious [conditions] to reduce the impact.’
Harrowing accounts were emerging of patients who died with no oxygen, with one grieving relative telling Globo: ‘You have no idea what it was like… the shouting, people were dying. Even health professionals, everyone was crying.’
‘The oxygen stopped, the patients were dying on the stretchers and the nurses did not know what to do,’ another relative said.
The new variant, described by the WHO as ‘worrying’, is feared to be more contagious and to have spread throughout Brazil and possibly further – with Britain shutting down travel from South America on Thursday.
In a move that prompted consternation in Portugal, transport secretary Grant Shapps said travel from the EU nation would also be halted because of its links with Brazil, although there are exemptions for truck drivers.
Cases in Brazil are at their highest level ever, with more than 360,000 in the last week alone, while the daily death rate is hovering around 1,000 for the first time since the first wave peaked in the Southern Hemisphere winter.
At least one cemetery in Manaus, a city of 2.2million people, had mourners queuing up to enter and bury their dead, with Brazilian artists and football teams joining the cry for help.
According to official figures, Manaus on Wednesday saw a fourth straight day of record burials – 198, with 87 of them deaths from Covid-19.
A woman is comforted outside a Manaus hospital as armed personnel keep order during a disastrous outbreak in the city
Medical workers wearing white hazmat suits examine the body of 53-year-old Shirlene Morais Costa, who died after suffering coroanvirus symptoms at home in Manaus
A tiny stretcher brings in a baby suspected of having Covid-19 at the HRAN hospital in the federal capital Brasilia on Thursday
Vitor Cabral comforts his wife Raissa Floriana after her father was hospitalised with Covid-19 at the 28 de Agosto hospital
Hospitals in Manaus admitted few new Covid-19 patients on Thursday, suggesting many will suffer from the disease at home, and some will likely die.
Park of the Tribes, a community of more than 2,500 indigenous people on the outskirts of Manaus, went more than two months without any resident showing Covid-19 symptoms.
In the past week, 29 people have tested positive for the coronavirus, said Vanda Ortega, a volunteer nurse in the community. Two went to urgent care units, but no one yet has required hospitalization.
‘We’re really very worried,’ said Ortega, who belongs to the Witoto ethnicity. ‘It’s chaos here in Manaus. There isn’t oxygen for anyone.’
The crisis has prompted the government in Amazonas to transport 235 patients who depend on oxygen to five other states and the federal capital Brasilia.
‘I want to thank those governors who are giving us their hand in a human gesture,’ Amazonas governor Wilson Lima said at a news conference on Thursday.
‘All of the world looks at us when there is a problem [with] the Earth’s lungs,’ he said, using a poetic term for the Amazon. ‘Now we are asking for help. Our people need this oxygen.’
Governors and mayors throughout the country offered help amid a flood of social media videos in which distraught relatives of Covid-19 patients in Manaus begged for people to buy them oxygen.
A woman cries during a protest outside the 28 Agosto hospital in Manaus, where authorities are planning to transport scores of patients to other states and the federal capital Brasilia
Cemetery workers carry the remains of 89-year-old Abilio Ribeiro, who died of the coronavirus, into a grave in Manaus
Military police officers patrol the streets in Manaus after a 7pm curfew was imposed to tackle the crisis in the Amazonian city
Amazonas authorities have even appealed to the United States to send a military transport plane to Manaus with oxygen cylinders, a Brazilian congressman said.
But there are growing demands Brazil’s federal government to do more, with president Jair Bolsonaro under pressure to act after long downplaying the dangers of Covid-19.
Federal prosecutors in Manaus have asked a local judge to pressure Bolsonaro’s administration to step up its support, saying that an air force plane for oxygen transportation ‘needs repair, which brought a halt to the emergency influx’.
Local authorities recently called on the federal government to reinforce Manaus’ stock of oxygen, while the air force said it was deploying two planes to transport patients.
During the first wave of the crisis, Manaus consumed a maximum 30,000 cubic metres of oxygen per day, but now the need has more than doubled to nearly 70,000 cubic metres, according to White Martins.
‘Due to the strong impact of the Covid -19 pandemic, the consumption of oxygen in the city increased exponentially over the last few days in comparison with a volume that was already extremely high,’ White Martins said. ‘Demand is much higher than anything predictable and… continues to grow significantly.’
The company added that Manaus’ remote location presents challenging logistics, requiring additional stocks to be transported by boat and by plane.
Governor Lima – once seen as an ally of Bolsonaro – has also decreed more health restrictions, including the suspension of public transport and a curfew between 7pm and 6am.
Lima said the state was ‘in the most critical moment of the pandemic’ as he announced the 10-day curfew beginning on Friday, saying that ‘we are in a war operation’.
‘Here there aren’t any empty beds left, any oxygen tanks, nothing – all we have left is faith,’ Manaus resident Luiza Castro said.
A struggling patient is transported by medical workers at the Getulio Vargas hospital in Manaus where health workers have been taking empty cylinders to a local oxygen provider in the hope there would be some available
A man breaks down outside the 28 de Agosto hospital as Manaus faces a shortage of bed space and oxygen supplies
A man walks on an empty street in Manaus after the governor of Amazonas imposed the curfew to curb the infection rate
Bolsonaro, a right-wing former army captain often compared to Donald Trump, has raged against lockdowns and described the virus as a ‘little flu’, laughing off the dangers even when he himself was infected with the disease.
He has also flouted social distancing by appearing at rallies of his supporters, and touted the unproven anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid-19.
Felipe Naveca, an expert studying coronavirus mutations in Amazonas, said the new strain was ‘very probably’ more contagious than the original virus, just like new variants found in Britain and South Africa.
The worsening situation in Manaus was not due only to one variant, he added, warning that authorities were expecting a rise in virus cases due to end-of-year parties.
‘We need urgent support from the population to reduce the transmission and slow down the virus’s evolution,’ Naveca said.
Experts worry new mutations could eventually show resistance to the vaccines developed to combat the original strain.
However, ‘right now there’s no evidence that this line prejudices the vaccine’s response,’ Naveca said, and Brazil aims to start its vaccination campaign sometime this month.
There is concern, though, the new variant could already have spread throughout Brazil, and it has been detected as far afield as Japan.
Brazil has had 8.3million confirmed infections and 207,000 deaths in total. The number of fatalities is second only to the United States.