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Covid mutants: What are the risks?

Could vaccine resistant coronavirus variants push back global recovery?

A year into the Covid crisis, German Chancellor Angela Merkel this week announced her country was facing what amounts to ‘a new pandemic’. “The mutation from Great Britain has taken over,” she warned. “It is clearly more lethal, more contagious, and contagious longer.” Even in countries where attempts to vaccinate the population are continuing at pace, the threat from mutant variants that have shown a greater ability than the original pathogen to evade vaccines is threatening any recovery. The US Centers for Disease Control this week warned that variants now dominate cases in California, and that increased air travel for spring break - combined with a rise in the number of states easing mask and social distancing mandates - may result in another surge. The UK hopes to curb the spread of variants as part of its roadmap to reopening, but in the last week an adviser to Boris Johnson’s government warned that any return to international travel was “unlikely” given the threat new mutations pose. So how long will Covid variants rule our lives and what can be done to curb their influence? Paul Henley is joined by a panel of experts.

Available now

53 minutes

Last on

Sat 27 Mar 2021 04:06GMT

Contributors

ǻ峦Ǵڳ- Molecular epidemiologist, University of Bern; co-developer, Nextstrain 

Sarah Caddy - Clinical Research Fellow in Viral Immunology, University of Cambridge  

Syra Madad - Pathogen preparedness expert and infectious disease epidemiologist 

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Jonathan Li - Harvard Medical School, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston 

Picture

A lab technician in Mexico performs a test to investigate if a new strain of the coronavirus is circulating in the state of Jalisco. Credit: REUTERS/Fernando Carranza.

Broadcasts

  • Fri 26 Mar 2021 10:06GMT
  • Sat 27 Mar 2021 00:06GMT
  • Sat 27 Mar 2021 04:06GMT

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