Slack / Private Message Drop — page 383

[2021-01-11 15:16:56] [Andrew Rambaut] Not yet. Fiacruz has one case of reinfection (not this lineage - but another with 484K) [2021-01-11 15:17:36] [Andrew Rambaut] Latest UK estimate is a total number of infections as 20% of population. [2021-01-11 15:17:41] [Kristian Andersen] Okie dokie - will be important/interesting to know. Also very curious to see what's going to happen in Israel after the vax campaign. [2021-01-11 15:17:50] [Andrew Rambaut] Manaus estimated at 60-70% from first wave [2021-01-11 15:18:20] [Kristian Andersen] Yeah - high... (although I saw quite a number of people disagreeing with that number and the IFR seemed too low to me) [2021-01-11 15:18:36] [Andrew Rambaut] South Africa high but the area where the variant took off is really high - urban, dense, deprived. [2021-01-11 15:21:43] [Kristian Andersen] 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). [2021-01-11 15:24:54] [Kristian Andersen] It's all very interesting - although to be honest, I don't need any additional excitement at the moment. I just want to get 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. [2021-01-11 15:30:01] [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 lower prevalence areas [2021-01-11 15:32:29] [Kristian Andersen] 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). [2021-01-11 15:32:47] [Kristian Andersen] (No question about the UK lineage though). [2021-01-11 15:33:07] [Andrew Rambaut]