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Slack / Private Message Drop, p.383 [SLACK_000597] · slack_pm:msg:03988

Page text: p.383 · original PDF

Date
2021-01-11 15:30
Type
chat message · slack
recipient
Kristian G. Andersen, Robert F. Garry, Edward C. Holmes
speaker
Andrew Rambaut

Recipients on this medium are inferred from channel membership, not per-message addressing.

It could be that the UK one is the only one that is inherently more transmissible (perhaps because of the 681H?).The other two are only taking off in hi-prevalence areas. We will see as more of those arrive in much lowerprevalence areas

In context

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  1. 2021-01-11 15:18 Kristian G. Andersen open
    Yeah - high... (although I saw quite a number of people disagreeing with that number and the IFR seemed too low tome)
  2. 2021-01-11 15:18 Andrew Rambaut open
    South Africa high but the area where the variant took off is really high - urban, dense, deprived.
  3. 2021-01-11 15:21 Kristian G. Andersen open
    Yup - seems plausible that immune escape might be the most likely explanation here - whether linked to natural immunity or vaccine induced. Why that would lead to increased transmission, I'm not quite sure I understand - except if e.g., high ACE2 binding is associated with both escape and transmission (not implausible).
  4. 2021-01-11 15:24 Kristian G. Andersen open
    It's all very interesting - although to be honest, I don't need any additional excitement at the moment. I just want toget back to being a totally anonymous scientist (with 323 followers on Twitter) looking at Ebola and Lassa genomes. SARS-CoV-2 is a little too exciting for my liking.
  5. 2021-01-11 15:30 Andrew Rambaut
    It could be that the UK one is the only one that is inherently more transmissible (perhaps because of the 681H?).The other two are only taking off in hi-prevalence areas. We will see as more of those arrive in much lowerprevalence areas
  6. 2021-01-11 15:32 Kristian G. Andersen open
    Yup, I talked to Helen Branswell earlier today and I mentioned this exact point too - I'm not sure we have good data suggesting that e.g., the RSA variant is indeed more transmissible (even the data showing it's displacing other lineages is a little lacking - at least what I have seen).
  7. 2021-01-11 15:32 Kristian G. Andersen open
    (No question about the UK lineage though).
  8. 2021-01-11 15:33 Andrew Rambaut open
    Agree. No comparative rates for RSA. It is just fast growing.
  9. 2021-01-11 15:33 Andrew Rambaut open
    Although... there is a Finnish import of the RSA variant that has 681H.

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