New, improved Covid?

From Radio NZ

A new variant of coronavirus has been found which is growing faster in some parts of England, MPs have been told.

From the Herald (from the Telegraph)

A new variant of coronavirus has been identified in England and is spreading rapidly.

There is a sense in which this is true. The virus is spreading rapidly in southern England. And, because new mutations arise all the time and get passed on as the virus is spread, there is a new mutation that is more common in these new cases. However, there’s currently no evidence that there’s anything about this mutation that affects the spread of the virus at all.

Over the year,  thousands of genetic variants have been seen in the coronavirus (a paper a few weeks ago looks at 12000).  Some of these have become common, and so  might possibly  be better at spreading  Some mutations have arisen more than once and so might possibly be better at spreading. Mostly, though, variants have become common because they’ve found themselves in favorable circumstances — in people who don’t wear masks, or people who live in crowded situations, or people who go to church and sing, or who attend motorcycle rallies, or whatever. These variants are common because they won the lottery, not because they worked smarter and harder or had a #8-wire can-do attitude.  And, to be fair, the stories do later go on to admit this, or at least raise it as a contrasting view.

So far, there is one variant, called D614G, with reasonable (though not overwhelming) evidence that it makes a bit of difference to coronavirus transmission.  For example, a recent paper on it says

Although evidence is still accumulating, the increasing predominance of D614G in humans raises the possibility that viruses with this mutation have a fitness advantage, perhaps allowing more efficient person-to-person transmission. Our virological data are consistent with, but do not themselves demonstrate, this hypothesis. Interestingly, this mutation does not appear to significantly impact disease severity

In contrast, the Herald, (from news.com.au) back in July wrote about the D614G variant

The worst fears of epidemiologists have been realised: Covid-19 has mutated, and the strain now dominating the world is up to six times more infectious.

Fortunately, it wasn’t anything like six times more infectious.  This new one probably won’t amount to much either, though the people who look at Covid genomics will keep track of it like they do with all the other variants.

Update: useful Twitter thread for people who want nerdy details.