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TORONTO —
A new variant of the virus that causes COVID-19 that first surfaced in the U.K. and has since been found in several other countries is likely already in Canada, a health expert says.
“I’d be surprised if it’s not, actually,” Ronald St. John, the former director-general of the Centre for Emergency Preparedness and Response at the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), told CTV News Channel Saturday.
“It’s spread to other countries,” St. John said. “Since it’s been found since September, there’s no reason why people coming since September haven’t been able to bring that new strain to Canada.”
The new variant that emerged from the U.K. has since been found in other countries around the world, including France, Japan, Israel and Sweden.
PHAC said in a statement on Dec. 24 that there had been “no evidence of these variants in Canada to-date” and that it was enhancing screening and scrutiny of quarantine plans for inbound passengers.
But St. John said finding the first case is “a little like finding a needle in a haystack” among the virus strain already in Canada, but that it will likely emerge.
On Dec. 20, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a restriction on flights from the U.K. to Canada in an effort to prevent the new variant from coming to Canada. That restriction has since been extended to Jan. 6.
But St. John said these measure may have come too little, too late.
“It’s a question of if the horse is out of the barn already, and are we closing the doors too late?” St. John said, adding that while the restrictions may be a good idea to try until the first cases are found in Canada, “it seems a little bit difficult to keep this strain from coming in just by closing down flights.”
The new variant of the virus “may be up to 70 per cent more transmissible than the original version of the disease,” U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in a press conference on Dec. 19, though a new study from the London School of Hygiene And Tropical Medicine suggests the virus is about 56 per cent more contagious.
Two other variants of COVID-19 have also been found in Nigeria and South Africa, leading Canada to expand screening and monitoring measures on flights inbound from South Africa.
St. John said both variants need further study to understand how variations in the genes could impact the behaviour of the virus and its effects on how the disease presents itself in the people who have contracted it, adding that the variant found in South Africa also appear, “at this point,” to be more contagious than the base strain of coronavirus already in Canada.
As to whether or not the vaccines already being delivered in Canada will be effective in defending against these new variants, St. John said he doesn’t believe the virus will mutate in the same way seasonal influenza does, and that the vaccines will likely be effective.
“So far, as near as I know, the vaccine targets many different parts of the virus,” St. John said. “So it’s a good thing that it does, and that the virus probably will not escape the vaccine.”
BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin has also said he is “confident” his company’s vaccine, created with Pfizer, will be effective against the new U.K. variant of the virus.
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