New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group Note of meeting Date & Location of meeting: 11:00 –13.00 18December2020 -Via telecon only In attendance: Chair: Peter Horby (PH) NERVTAG Members: Peter Openshaw (PO), Andrew Hayward (AH),Wei Shen Lim (WSL),Julian Hiscox (JHi),John Edmunds (JE), Neil Ferguson (NF), Robert Dingwall (RD),Muge Cevik (MCe), Wendy Barclay (WB), Jim McMenamin […]
New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group Note of meeting Date & Location: 12:00 –13.30 21 December 2020 -Via telecon only In attendance: Chair: Peter Horby (PH) NERVTAG Members: Andrew Hayward (AH), Julian Hiscox (JHi), John Edmunds (JE), Neil Ferguson (NF), Wendy Barclay (WB),Wei Shen Lim (WSL), Cariad Evans (CE) SPI-M: Angela McLean (AM), Graham […]
New strain of COVID-19 reported to World Health Organization. Chief Medical Officer for England, Professor Chris Whitty, said: “As announced on Monday, the UK has identified a new variant of COVID-19 through Public Health England’s genomic surveillance.” “As a result of the rapid spread of the new variant, preliminary modelling data and rapidly rising […]
Two cases of a new SARS-CoV-2 variant, which originated in South Africa, have been identified in the UK. The 2 cases were identified in the UK on 22 December 2020 and both have been in contact with someone who has travelled from South Africa. Public Health England’s Health Protection Teams have followed up with both […]
Public Health England (PHE) has confirmed that lateral flow devices (LFDs) used in mass testing can detect the new COVID-19 variant. Scientists at PHE’s Porton Down laboratory have carried out a rapid evaluation using clinical and laboratory grown samples containing the VUI 202012/01 variant to test whether it can be detected by lateral flow devices (LFDs) currently in […]
A new variant of the virus that causes COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) has been identified across the South East of England. The variant was identified due to Public Health England’s (PHE) proactive and enhanced monitoring following the increase in cases seen in Kent and London. The variant has been named ‘VUI – 202012/01’ (the first Variant Under Investigation […]
Date/Time: 21 December 2020Incident/Event title/Name: New SARS-CoV-2 variant with multiple spike protein mutationsNotification*: Alert Warning Activation ExecutionFrom: […]
Report written by: Andrew Rambaut1, Nick Loman2, Oliver Pybus3, Wendy Barclay4, Jeff Barrett5, Alesandro Carabelli6, Tom Connor7, Tom Peacock4, David L Robertson8, Erik Volz4, on behalf of COVID-19 Genomics Consortium UK (CoG-UK)9. University of Edinburgh University of Birmingham University of Oxford Imperial College London Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute University of Cambridge Cardiff University MRC-University of […]
Background The WHO-COM is an expert group of more than 150 scientists around the world with expertise in animal models of viral diseases. Since February 2020 the group has met weekly to discuss advances, foster collaborations, share resources and reagents and avoid duplication of effort. The WHO-COM met on 22 December 2020 to discuss current […]
The new variant transmits more easily than the previous one but there is no evidence that it is more likely to cause severe disease or mortality. Main points Data from whole genome sequencing, epidemiology and modelling suggest the new variant ‘VUI – 202012/01’ (the first Variant Under Investigation in December 2020) transmits more easily than […]
