Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (UK) said Friday that the variant of the coronavirus first detected in England — and spreading around the world, including in the United States — “may be associated with a higher degree of mortality."
The new strain was already known to be more infectious than the original virus.
Studies have suggested it is 30 to 70 percent more transmissible.
At a Friday news briefing at 10 Downing Street (residence of the British PM), Johnson and his advisers gave the first indication that the strain might also be more deadly.
England’s chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, offered an example.
He said that among 1,000 men in England age 60 years or older, the original virus would kill 10. The new variant, he said, would kill 13 or 14.
That would represent a 30% rise in mortality, though it is important to note that the absolute risk of death remains low.
Since the new variant was discovered in Britain last year, public health officials had stressed that the mutated virus did not appear to make people sicker or increase deaths.
So this small but measurable uptick in mortality is potentially worrying.
Vallance did not explain why the variant might be linked to more deaths — whether that might relate to something inherent in the strain or too overwhelmed health systems being unable to prevent otherwise survivable cases from becoming deadly.
The calculation that the variant might be more lethal came from the government's New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group, which examined several surveillance studies.
“I want to stress that there's a lot of uncertainty around these numbers, and we need more work to get a precise handle on it,” he said.
“But it obviously is a concern that this has an increase in mortality as well as an increase in transmissibility."
The variant has been detected in more than 50 countries and is the dominant strain in the United Kingdom.
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