Coronavirus restrictions ‘would work’ against new strain

Public health restrictions would still work against the new coronavirus strain if it spreads to the State from Britain, according to Cillian De Gascun, director of UCD’s National Virus Reference Laboratory.

“The public health interventions that we have against the virus will be effective against this novel variant; just people need to be more vigilant,” he said.

Precautionary action such as the travel ban was being taken to prevent the spread of the variant because much of the data around it was “preliminary” and “unexplained” and because of concerns about the variant’s mutations in the spike protein, the part of the virus that helps it infect cells in the body, he said.

“We don’t want to take any chances with it because if it is more transmissible and it is evolving more quickly, then that will make it more difficult potentially to control,” said Dr De Gascun, a member of the National Public Health Emergency Team.

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He said there was no suggestion this new virus strain caused more disease in people it infected and there was no evidence that it would damage the effectiveness of the vaccines.

“It is not unreasonable to be cautious at this point until we have more information and we can answer those questions a little better,” he told The Irish Times.

Dr De Gascun said the new coronavirus variant could potentially result in the reinfection of people who previously had Covid-19 and who developed protective antibodies from that infection.

“It is possible that the antibodies that they produced against the old virus from their original infection might not be as effective in protecting them against this novel variant,” he said.

“We don’t have the laboratory studies to confirm that but that is one of the concerns at this point.”

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said in a threat assessment briefing document on the new strain that it “seems likely” that there will be some reduction in neutralisation by antibodies.

“But there is as yet no evidence that there is a resulting impact on increased risk for reinfection or lower vaccine effectiveness,” said the EU agency.