The New COVID-19 B.1.1.7 Variant

Emily Schall ‘22

Just as the United States hits its one-year mark since COVID-19 began, a new variant of the virus was discovered. Information regarding the new strand is limited but experiments and testing are underway to help answer the world’s questions.
“Scientists are working to learn more about how easily they spread, whether they could cause more severe illness, and whether currently authorized vaccines will protect people against them,” the Center for Disease Control reported. 

The first case of the new strand was reported in the United Kingdom in the fall of 2020. It was reported in Colorado a month later. Since then, cases of the new strand have risen. People are terrified because the new strand is so new that its effects are still unknown. 
Junior Jonathan Raport expressed his concerns, saying, “the new strain of the virus seems worrisome and discouraging. There are so many unknowns and the efficiency of the vaccine on the new variant is a huge mystery.”
“The new variants make COVID-19 feel like a never-ending pandemic. It seems like every day there is something new to be scared of,” junior Yael Abergel said. 
All countries have been working to identify what led the variant to become more severe and threatening to people’s lives, and the United Kingdom was the first to succeed at this. 
“According to the UK researchers, the B.1.1.7 variant is up to 70 percent more transmissible because it had 22 coding changes to the virus genome,” CTV reported. 
Researchers are still not sure whether the new vaccine for COVID-19 will be effective towards the new, more deadly variant. The goal for many is to distribute the current vaccine as quickly as possible, to prevent the overall spread of COVID-19 and its variants. 
“The take-home message is that we’re really in a race now, and really this only increases our urgency to mass vaccinate the population and protect the population before additional variants may evolve and emerge,” Dr. Charles Chiu of UC San Francisco said. 
People are worried that the vaccine may not work for the new variant and what this could mean for the world. 
“The continued proliferation of variants is of great concern and could reverse the recent positive trends we’re seeing,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, said. 
However, Dr. Anthony Fauci is quite confident in the vaccine's efficiency towards the variant.  He told The Guardian Newspaper, “please remember the… currently utilized vaccines are quite effective against the B.1.1.7 lineage.”
Rather than allowing this new strand to erase hope of life ever returning to normal, people are being advised to see this as another reason to stay safe and abide by the Center for Disease Control’s precautions. 
“With the new COVID-19 variant circulating the world, it is imperative that people strictly adhere to social distancing, masking, and only going out to do what is essential. We have to hope that the vaccine will prevent severe disease against new variants, but we must use science to guide whether this is true,” sophomore Russel Moss said.