Brazil variant “of concern” to Public Health

Thursday 04 March 2021

A new variant of corona virus has come to the attention of Guernsey’s Civil Contingencies Authority, after six people in the UK tested positive for the P1 or ‘Brazil’ variant. There is no indication that it has spread to Guernsey at any point.

The mutation was first recorded in Brazil last year in a city called Manaus.

“Interestingly, this variant first emerged towards the end of last year,” said Director of Public Health Dr Nicola Brink, which has only been confirmed in the UK in the last week.

“It caused a very large second wave of infection. This was surprising because it emerged in a city which had previously had a very large wave. It was thought a lot of the population had already been exposed to the virus - despite this they had a very large second wave.”

Pictured: Dr Brink answered questions about the Brazil variant during the latest media briefing.

The new variant is concerning for a number of reasons, including increased transmissibility and the unknown factor as to how it will impact the effectiveness of currently-available vaccines. 

“There are some mutations in the spike protein,” said Dr Brink, explaining the variant.

“There is some concern that this might impact on vaccine efficacy.” The spike protein is a structure on the virus that is targeted by the current vaccines. 

Picture: Dozens of variations have been discovered since the beginning of the pandemic.

It’s common for viruses to continually mutate and there are numerous variants of the corona virus already. Public Health has been working to confirm which variant triggered the latest outbreak.

“We’ve sequentially tested a number of samples from each week and all of them have been the Kent variant,” confirmed Dr Brink. We learnt of the presence of the Kent variant earlier in the year.

“We can determine that we are probably dealing with a single wave and not multiple introductions of different variants,” said Dr Brink.

Public Health continues to monitor the emerging Brazil variant, as it appears to be “very transmissible – possibly more transmissible than the Kent variant”.