Nervtag meeting on SARS-CoV-2 variant under investigation VUI-202012/01

In summary,

NERVTAG has moderate confidence that VUI-202012/01 demonstrates a substantial increase in transmissibility compared to other variants.

• NERVTAG concluded that there are currently insufficient data to draw any conclusion on:

- Underlying mechanism of increased transmissibility (e.g. increased viral load, tissue distribution of virus replication, serial interval etc)

- The age distribution of cases

- Disease severity: 4 deaths in around 1000 cases have been identified but further work is needed to compare this fatality rate with comparable data sets.

- Antigenic escape. The location of the mutations in the receptor binding domain of the spike glycoprotein raises the possibility that this variant is antigenically distinct from prior variants.

Four probable reinfections have been identified amongst 915 subjects with this variant but further work is needed to compare this reinfection rate with comparable data sets.

• The committee discussed the geographic extent of spread of the variant:

- Within the UK, the variant is concentrated in the London, South East and East of England but has been detected in various parts of the UK.

- Few cases of this variant have been reported internationally but one confirmed export from the UK to Australia has been reported.

It was noted that other countries have lower sequencing capability than the UK.