The Delta variant is beginning to spread, threatening the EU’s Covid advance

The Delta coronavirus variant, which has spread across the UK, has become prevalent in groups in Portugal and Germany, France and Spain, warning European health officials that more action is needed to slow the spread.

Although the new strain that first emerged in India is only a fraction of all coronavirus cases on the European mainland, it is gaining ground, according to global genomic data extracted from the Gisaid virus monitoring database by the Financial Times. FT estimates show that 96 percent of the sequenced Covid-19 infections are in Portugal, more than 20 percent in Italy, and about 16 percent in Belgium.

The small but growing number of cases has raised concerns that the Delta variant could halt progress in lowering the EU’s level of new infections and deaths to at least two levels since the autumn.

“We are in the process of crushing the virus and crushing the pandemic, and we must in no way let the Delta variants prevail,” French Health Minister Olivier Véran told a vaccination center in Paris on Tuesday.

Véran said 2% and 4% of the virus samples being studied in France were being shown as a Delta variant: “It could still be said to be low, but a few weeks ago it is similar to the situation in the UK.” FT’s analysis of Gisaid’s data suggests that this number may be higher.

In Portugal, the transmission of the variant community has been detected in a large area of ​​Lisbon, where more than 60% of new coronavirus cases in the country have been identified in the last week. They have banned bans that are not essential for commuting to the city this weekend, in an attempt to prevent the point from being extended to other countries.

Scientists across the continent are looking to the UK – Covid-19 cases have tripled in the last month and the Delta variant accounts for around 98 per cent of all new infections – after what can happen and what measures are needed to get the traces. take.

After official data showed that the Delta variant increases its risk of hospitalization by 2.2 times compared to the Alpha variant, the UK government has set a one-month delay this week to remove the rest of the coronavirus restrictions.

“The UK’s decision to reopen life and society will serve us as a laboratory in Europe,” said Bruno Lina, a Lyon virologist, who advises the French government and helps coordinate the sequencing of the country’s variants.

Scientists say that when a lot of people’s behavior and life and business restrictions are being removed, whether the set of infected Delta infections in the EU will become larger outbreaks will depend in part on how many people have been vaccinated.

Recent research by UK governments has highlighted the need to complete vaccination programs as soon as possible. According to Data collected by Public Health EnglandThe first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine is generally less effective against the Delta variant than with previous strains. Two doses with Delta increases protection against symptomatic infections from 33 percent to 81 percent.

While about 46% of the population in the UK is fully vaccinated, the vaccination rate in most European countries is between 20% and 30%. In France, about 26 percent of the population is fully integrated.

French authorities are currently trying to have an outbreak in the Landes region, near the Spanish border, where 125 cases of the Delta variant have been confirmed by genetic sequencing and another 130 are suspected, accounting for about 30% of recent infections. Sets of the Delta variant have also been identified in recent weeks in the southern districts of Paris and at the Strasbourg art school.

In each case, health officials have responded with the same formula: increase contact monitoring and renew the push to include people in affected areas.

“If we keep the vaccine at a good pace and keep some non-pharmacy interventions closed by masks, we can suppress the circulation of the virus this summer,” said French virologist Lina. “This variant will displace others – we have to keep that in mind – but it doesn’t mean it will lead to a new epidemic wave.”

Some scientists fear that the Delta variant has already become more widespread, but have gone unnoticed because less genomic sequencing is needed to identify the variants in continental Europe. While the United Kingdom has sequenced more than 500,000 Sars-Cov-2 genomes, Germany, France, and Spain have sequenced about 130,000, 47,000, and 34,000, respectively.

“It’s costly, it takes a lot of time and it’s set aside,” said Antoine Flahault, director of the Institute of Global Health at the University of Geneva.

However, Denmark has sequenced a large number of cases and still identified a small number of Delta infections, although the variant reached that country in the UK approximately.

Experts say this could be explained in part by differences in demographics and movements, including the number of cases imported from regions with high prevalence into the country, such as India, and living conditions in growing communities.

The pace of Delta’s spread across European countries remains “a bit of a mystery,” said Jeff Barrett, director of the Covid-19 Genomics Initiative at Cambridge’s Wellcome Sanger Institute.

However, many experts believe that wherever the Delta variant enters, it will eventually become dominant. The key, they say, will be to increase the proportion of fully vaccinated people by slowing down the transmission of the virus as much as possible.

“We need to be very clear about the messages,” Lina said in Lyon. “This is not over.”

Additional reports by Daniel Dombey, Peter Wise, Guy Chazan and Clive Cookson