ah, welcome to was a part to do to christmas in a row covered 19 is once again going in for the kill you on the con there and has already left 2 restrictions in air travel. i'm looking cancellation, but it says that the business maybe more by the pressure on rating strain, health care systems. how so our, our defenses against this seemingly need to attend on the present check list that i'm now joined by lawrence young ologist at the university of boring dr. young. it's good to see you. thank you very much for taking time to talk to us. thank you . now, as you know i'm, it was named after the 15th out of the $24.00 letters of the alphabet. and it seems to be gaining notoriety as it moves along. how showing that the chances of the patient potential being exhausted before the greek alphabet runs out of letters

. an interesting cause to we don't look with any virus infection, the spreading, you'll get changes, you'll get mutations. this has been happening all the while. these mutations, all sort of selected for those are going to be more infectious or data are able to evade part of our immune system. so we're seeing this all the time. the only way to quote this actually is to get people back. so they did actually try to swap the spread of the virus. so sadly, these viruses are popping up all the time. many of us who get infected will be infected with more than one variant anyway. and it's just a bit of a game in terms of chasing the genetics of the virus and trying to suppress these changes by dampening transmission. and the way you do that is by vaccination. so i hope we get to a place where we don't have to exhaust the whole of the greek alphabet, but i mean, we only have 9 letters left. so given the, in the speed of the mutations, it looks like the main into the case. and i read the data that will help

organization is already contemplating naming you variance after these are constellations that there's really unlimited potential there. i know you said before that we will have to get used to leaving this virus and we will have to adapt it. but how long do you think it will be being such and such an imposing constraint on the predictability of our lives? yeah, i think, i think we're, you know, we're learning about this all the time. and i think it's going to take some time before it's settled, what we're saying, essentially in real world and evolutionary terms, if you like. is it worth adapting to us? we've never seen anything like this before. buyers adapting johnson rather than adapting to the virus was going to say however, human behavior does have to be taken into account too. so it is a 2 way street and it's going to take some time for us to settle into a form of endemic invention. that's one, and the picture becomes more predictable, more seasonable, more manageable. and way, when you get to pandemic like this,

you know, you can't think about an infection becoming endemic, a more controllable, and to grasp it worldwide, we'll see what we've learned from on recall, which we, we should have realized. anyway, of course we did was it was, it's important for governments to control and to cool off to what's going on in their own countries, unless you will. so a keep them on what's going on elsewhere in the world. you'll never get a handle on this, hence this. what we've heard all the time is mantra, if you like it, you know, we're all in this together when nobody safe until everybody sites and the whole issue of vaccine democracy like an equity is so important. now you mentioned already that every new variance seems to be more daring than the last, but i think only really looks like these special a whole they seem collection all some old mutations plus some new ones that have we seen anything like this? is this the sort of b, this curious so far?

is the scariest, because many of us hold the delta would be the sort of p i did. i thought, well, you know, going to get a, are surely any more transmissible than delta. and what happened? you got something which is popped up with more than 30 changes in that spite protein that we're all interested in. it's accumulated, all the mutations we've seen in different various, all in one virus. and that raises a very interesting issues about where did it come from in the 1st place. is it possible to get even more mutations and what's going to happen in terms of disease severity and vaccine protection is suggesting that, you know, the virus has still got some way to go and we'll throw up some more surprises. i am wondering how consistent is our, our understanding of the wires from one bear in to the next. i mean, i, you personally, how often do you have to revise what you have taken for granted about it? yeah, well, you know, we go, i think modern technology is

a wonderful thing so that we can actually read the genome. great. and we can understand what some of these changes mean. so we know in our chronic is accumulated changes that we know are associated with increased info activity or trans miss ability. and indeed with the ability to evade certain elements of the immune system. learning about this all the time. you know, we can, we can predict the structure of this by protein and how interact with cell. so we already knew that there would be increased infective, a t simply by the way, that despite proteins, changes have affected the shape. and so that's about now born out to be true, of course, in both in both in real life as well as in laboratory studies in the same way we've just heard over the last 24 hours. the, there is a significant degree of immune evasion in terms of antibody responses. so we can bridge, we can predict up to a point, but obviously we're only looking at one bit of the virus important to stress that

all this focus on want to be the virus is important. because this is how the virus gets into cells. and this is how the vaccines are working at the moment. but there are also things we need to be doing to increase the chances of better management of this forest by, by targeting other bits of the virus genome, not just the protein. you mentioned that last there has been able to you as you put it in a certain element of the immune system and in plain english as far as i can tell, it would be, it would mean that it can actually reach the back in just an unity and some doctors in south africa have already reported that they have quite a number of patients vaccinated patients who have contract expires. they have also noticed that the, the number of children and young adults was denied is increasing. is, is that what you would normally expect from a virus? let's say, read it. i think it's a iraq with me, years after it. it has originated,

even supposed to be gaining in strength. and this point, what is it all depends. what you mean by gaining strength, because what we're seeing here is a virus that is more infectious because it has some degree of capacity to build around the immune system. it's infecting people who either previously and be infected, that other variant or indeed have been fully vaccinated. a lot of people. so the coming out, however, are suggesting and is only suggestion that a lot of this infection is model disease. and it's possible. but what we're seeing with this overcome variant is a virus that is gaining infectiousness, but as a consequence of vaccination, etc, is losing some of its strength in terms of inducing disease is virulence. one of the things we hoped originally by analogy with some of the viruses that might happen, although it's controversial, is as a virus adapts to up what is comes more infectious,

it may become less harmful. now whether this is the case or not with overcome, we don't know, but it's certainly much more infectious. and a lot of the other polls suggesting that even with full boosted vaccination, you can still get mo disease or perhaps not severe disease. it may be a totally ignorant question on my part, but with an age on virus like common 19. is there any difference between boxing community in unity, an indication the latter one doesn't really matter which there in your body has, has now before you come across a micron. yeah, this could have been a day to actually including some recent day to the suggest that if you've been previously infected with whatever variant and then get vaccinated, you have a better immune response. that's not surprising because depending on the vaccine, most of these vaccines have a little bit of the, of the virus, they just have the spite protein. of course, there are some vaccines that all using the whole virus. and of course,

you can understand is quite easy. the if your body see the whole virus is saying other bits, not just, no, just the spice of the bodies immune system response to a much broader array of different bits of the virus. and some of these are, some of these bits are mal conserved, the less changed since in the, on chrome variant, the nuclear protein. another protein that's in the, in the virus is, has only 4 full changes, not 30 changes. so one of the things is quite interesting about all of this is we understand more about the immune response more about how the vaccines are working. if you think about incorporating some of these other bits of the vars in these vaccines, and that's why there's a lot of talk at the moment about adapting, rapidly adapting the m already vaccines. not only to cope with the spike changes in all the combo, perhaps to include other bits of arista on, changed as much speaking about the way there is work. i understand that it's too early to same as relying on your professional and intuition. i know that they are,

for vaccines are approved in south africa and are in a y t a non replicating bio vector once and, and in an activated one who decides is do you think i am a crown would be more likely to reach 1st? that's a very, very difficult question. as i said earlier, i think i think attenuated vaccines may give a, make it better protection. but i think what we've learned, we've known for years about vaccines is mixing and matching vaccines works really well. so, so called heterozygous vaccination. so if you, for instance, add one of the attenuated vaccines followed by an m r a vaccine, you're lucky to get a much better immune response. at the moment it's really difficult because what we tried to do is almost do experiments in the real well, we know these vaccines a safe and have been approved and work. and the most important thing of all of calls is to protect against avidity, disease. today's a very important day for the u. k. the world because today marks one year since the

vaccine was the 1st use of an approved vaccine was injected actually somebody locally in the hospital where i work in coincidence in coventry in the u. k. moment keena was given the 1st dose a year ago today, and of course the hope there and it was, it was that we can protect against severe disease, and that's what we've seen or all around the world. so the most important thing obviously, is that we are ahead of the game a year into the, into, into vaccination. and it was a bit of a risk. we didn't know that vaccines would work. we just didn't know that that would be able to protect, but be able to protect against severe disease is really important. i think what we're going to see, what the pandemic has cost tract, if you like, is the development of new approaches to vaccines in develop these in a way that is rapid, but also more effective. now this new variance was 1st detected in

a south african before making a crossing in the northern hemisphere. how much you, geography, and the sort of host population, immunological status matter in terms of producing the new variance. i'm asking because you find the rely reluctance to associate the new there. is it any given country b, china k, brazil, india. we have quite a few areas which originated in specific countries. and there's another single one that originated in russia. not that i'm calling for it, but that's a, that's an interesting question to ponder, why some countries do get the same invitations and i don't wanna, you know, anybody in fact, he's generating musicians. this has been studied in the context of cove is really people who are in a compromise. so we know there are 2 things going on here. this partly to do with

the proportion of your population that's fascinated, obviously in south africa. and that those countries in south africa, they regard it to the low levels of, of vaccine coverage. but also where we, where this has been looked at in detail aware mutations similar to the mutations we're seeing, a number call. other parents have been demonstrating in a, in a person is actually in people who are in a compromise. these individuals have sometimes very prolonged infections. so normally we clear an infection like crone of ours, within a week or so it clears from our bodies. we call 10 days, sometimes these people are in a compromise, will have an infection for more than a 100 days. and they become a breeding ground for variance to develop. and that's where you see some of these more severe barrett's, if they spread into a pole. if these viruses spread into a population that's fully vaccinate to the company called go much further. even on recon actually might have been more restrict it if the population in south africa was mostly vaccinated, i think is

a complex mix actually of the immune competence of an individual and the mean protection of population. ok, well dr. young, we have to take a very short break right now, but we will get back in just a few moments. thank you. ah ha. to what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have. it's crazy confrontation, let it be an arms. race is often very dramatic. development. only personally, i'm going to resist. i don't see how that strategy will be successful, very difficult. time. time to sit down and talk ah

well, come back to all the parts with lawrence young ever religious at the university of 40 to young. many of your colleagues are in favor of st. border control measures in the, in an effort to spend the spread of the new varian. but i've also heard an alternative hypothesis that amik contagious nature may actually be a blessing in disguise. because it is allowed to spread widely and rapidly made for solid. the development of the new mutations, is that reasonable or is it too big of a risk to task this to position in real life and with real life? and so really what is a border control? we know it's very difficult when you've got a virus particularly infectious off your it takes a while to do the gina. once you identify new there, it's usually it's, it's,

it's spread beyond the original country. and that's the nature of infectious disease. and the nature of these days of international travel. so what's the, what's the purpose of having are severely restricting life to you and from south africa as them most countries around the world. and i'm not sure that there's any value in doing that. now to be frank, i think, i think a little really strange because as countries like australia or i know i've got friends in hong kong where quarantine is so straight and testing is so straight that you just, you know that, that, that's the way they control. it's very hard to do that in other countries. so i think this is questionable. i think it's really important that we support south africa. we don't cut off south africa, them having done such great work in sequencing the virus, etc. they need support. as for the spread of this, of course, it looks like it will come compete out delta. we're seeing that already in the u. k, we predict it will overtake delta. if it's a big, if, if this variance is associated with more more disease in fully vaccinated

individuals, then that could be a good thing. the worry we have, of course, is that always be a small number of the population, either unvaccinated, or whose response to vaccines are not great, and they will get poorly and get and that a small proportion of a large population of effect individuals could put enormous burden on alco systems and what we're concerned about is, you know, protecting our health care assistance from being overwhelmed at the moment that isn't the case in south africa. if you look at the number of people who are hospitalized, that's up. but people tend to be staying in the hospital for a short period. and what's really interesting is if you compare the data at the same time in terms of the number of cases when they had the delta wave in south africa, they had for moment, far more people in intensive care at that stage. and they do now. so this all goes well, but we'll be all the courses because we're looking at the data as it comes in. the hope is this will result in more mild disease. i think that's the case. then you

can say what i should perhaps it's not, it's not such a bad thing. i've read some reports that scientists have identified a special sort of south version of omics on the one that can be detected by a standard attack, which could only be seen the through genetic testing. if that's the case, is there a possibility other forms? are there a variance of the virus spreading around undetected because many countries are now trying to detect and usually standard p c r test just doesn't yeah. so, so you know that this was, becomes an issue of semantics on what you, what, what, how you call a variance variance. because all the while these are assembling ages are us, there were changes all the wall and you can map all of these. and it, so how do you define when, when all these changes become another variance? so the loss of variance circulating while also we just have to be concerned about

the ones that are more transmissible. and that's why, you know, mix surveillance is so important. i agree with you that was, it's possible to actually quite rapidly modify the pcl test if you want to take to particular variance. it's also really important that you have high levels of genomics of amos around the world. some countries don't do that to the south africa, really well. we know of the countries in the develop, well do that well, but, you know, let's, we're going to handle this elsewhere. i think that's going to be really important. and again, so another reason why the, what the more develop, well, it should be supporting genomics of items in other countries. because this is an important way to keep a handle on what's going on to make sure that if any nasty various are popping up, we identify the early, well, you know, the surveillance and intelligence usually come together and given the level of tensions, international tensions in the you know, in russian to west or between china and the united states in china and india as

a host of other countries. i can't imagine that there could be some use in santa one or incentive against sharing certain information with other countries, especially in those countries. what i've done to fight openly as an adversary from your vantage point. how free is comment response and surveillance that you've been such and such an advocate for how free it is from or bad all politics. yeah, i know it because we've seen this certainly with the global rollout of vaccinations and as i said earlier, you can understand the governments want to protect their own people, but we do have a responsibility. the rest of the world politics is always going to get in the way . have you said that you know, the world health organization that are really good job in supporting other countries? as far as i'm aware, most countries been very open,

around sharing data. what we don't want to do, as we've seen the last week, also is penalize a country like south africa being very open about the data that they provide. and what we hope from what we anticipate is that other countries are going to be just as open when they get data that demonstrates new variance popping up. and i think on the whole year, data sharing has been from the beginning. this has been a real testimony to the global interaction, and so the responsibility that we will have across the world to work together to combat. and there's a good idea when trying to press release to sequence very, you know, that was, that was the, that was the starting gun to being able to develop a vaccine. without that, we'd been in a lot of trouble. so i think that has been open, but i also oversee politics. siding inevitably gets in the way occasionally one area where politics gets in the way very prominently is of course the introduction and the recognition outside vaccinations that you think. and if you were to come to

moscow or i were to go to london, we would be treated as a major how i think we just do you see that as a problem, or is that perhaps some unknown silver lining there as well. as you know, i think there's a real issue here about the requirements for approval of drugs and the approval of vaccines on the data that's needed to support that and what type of rigorous are approaches. we have to make sure that when we are approving vaccines, they're recognized in different countries. and so we don't end up with a situation that we're facing at the moment. and along with that, i think is how the different agencies around the world are working. and again, i come back to the fact that it will hopefully help organization is really important and trying to push altogether. so we might have all these different regulatory requirements in different countries, but we need to unify more. i think this is going to be one. there are many,

many lessons i'm going to come out of this plan to make. i'm going to help us prepare the next for the next time. i think one of these is how do we unite so that we can work together internationally. we can approve developments vaccines, test internationally. that hasn't worked as well this time. and it's something we need to fix. now there's one question has been bothering me from the beginning of the malays and it is very intense. there are specific focus on anti comment protection b vaccination or mask wearing social distancing, et cetera. as opposed to for, to find your bias overall. and unity being conscious, being disciplined about your daily house choices. maybe my own, that psychological defense and you know, they decide to have some semblance of control over the virus. i was wondering, in your personal, you, in your professional, your how much does 11,

lifestyle influence her chances of contracting and combating the bars? yeah, he was a lot about that. we learned a lot about the differences in relation to disease outcomes in different populations. i e ethnic differences in the way people responded and how that might have led to some problems with the way different communities have been supported, managed and indeed messaged. the messaging is very important to populations. we've learned a lot about what we knew for years, which is the impact of co morbidities. so not only about social deprivation, but also about things like obesity and diabetes. and this is put into sharp focus, the need for not only individual responsibility, but governments to support the development of more preventative measures and more information to allow people to understand the personal responsibility that you just mentioned about our own health and how we need to control that and i think perhaps

if people didn't realize before, they certainly realize now that the other factors in their life of the lifestyle factors are really influencing the way you respond to this infection. and again, it's another i keep mentioning the same thing is another wake up call actually for taking personal responsibility for your health. but also for government i think messaging and supporting better individuals who are in situations where they are economically or socially deprived. we've known about these health inequality for many years. and sadly, a pandemic like this shines a big light on those inequalities. the, i'm very quickly if i mentioned the importance of messaging and from the very beginning of the spend down a fascination and for lack of community or heralded as the, the main weapons against the virus. and that also produced a certain push back, not only in terms of faxing hasn't been asking certain countries including russia now dealing with full blown rejection. and it only gets stronger.

i'm concerned that the, the army from darian ability to breach some of that back in and do community may actually, you know, provide some more arguments to the anti back community that they're going to, you know, feel a little bit in bold and spreading the message. yeah. i see, i think that is an issue because there are 2 groups of people that are very sort of hauled line, anti viruses and will ever you do. you'll never persuade them of the enormous benefit of vaccines for more than 9200 years. we've seen the enormous benefits, but i think those people inevitably be persuaded. then there was a vaccine hesitant. i think what we've seen and what particularly seeing in central and eastern european countries is a very, very high level of vaccine hesitancy. and this often comes from a mistrust in the government, and i think this is a big problem. it's having confidence in your government and in the messaging from your government about about the need to be vaccinated, the need to,

to adopt certain behavioral changes. and it, again, it demonstrates how important that sort of social contract is with governments. and it's a very difficult thing to fix. my view is rather than co rather than sort of coerced by mandating vaccination, we're hearing about this now. in certain european countries like the like austria, that you really do need to bring people along with you and that you, if you try and force people to do things that can be counter productive. but i think a lot of this is about how clear the message has been and how clear the evidence that you produce is an out adjustable. that is to your population. but they have to have trust in the government, but they don't have that. and this will know, maybe they also have something to do with the notion of personal responsibility. and if no messaging is working, maybe a government should allow me to take its course as cruel as it may sound. but i think people are rarely learn from somebody else's mistakes. they already come to their senses while they encounter danger and in dire need get life,

but we have more time to discuss that any more. thank you very much for being with us today. thank you very much to thank you for watching hope this year. yeah. next week on the older part. ah mm hm. mm ah. join me every thursday on the alex simon. sure. i'll be speaking to guess in the world politics. sport, business. i'm show business. i'll see you then awe

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