Cautious optimism…

Could things be looking up?

The message from Boris Johnson and Professor Chris Whitty at the Downing Street press briefing this evening was this: cases, hospitalisations and deaths are coming down.

The backdrop to the cautiously optimistic message is a string of encouraging vaccine developments and statistics.

Oxford University’s Professor Andy Pollard, part of the team behind the AstraZeneca vaccine, says the jab can be easily tweaked in response to new mutations. “I think the actual work on designing a new vaccine is very, very quick because it’s essentially just switching out the genetic sequence for the spike protein,” he said.

“And then there’s manufacturing to do and then a small scale study. So all of that can be completed in a very short period of time, and the autumn is really the timing for having new vaccines available for use.”

The AstraZeneca vaccine has been shown to cut transmission of the virus by a full two thirds. This was previously a big unknown. Government graphs have suggested that the speed at which restrictions are eased is highly dependent on the extent to which jabs prevent transmission.

Data from an ONS study of 1,300 people across England has also found antibodies in 15.3 per cent of blood samples, suggesting that at least one in seven of the population – some 8.6 million people – now has at least some immunity to the disease.

The fraction is likely to be an underestimate because antibody levels fade over time while resistance can remain. Government advisers have estimated the Covid mortality rate in the UK to be around 0.5 per cent which would suggest that around 22 million people in England already have some resistance to the virus, around 40 per cent of the population.

On top of this, a new milestone has been reached, and for once it’s worth celebrating: 10 million people have now had a first vaccine dose across the UK, including 90 per cent of the over 75s and all eligible care home residents.

Yet this new optimism makes things difficult for the government. There is now growing pressure on ministers to say more about when restrictions will be relaxed and to what extent. The PM has kicked the can down the road on schools – a particular concern – citing the need for more data. The roadmap for reopening schools will be announced on 22 February.

It has taken a flurry of good news for the PM to become cautious about promising an end to lockdown. No more “back to normal by [insert Christian holiday]”. This reticence might be a blessing.

Knock knock, WHO’s there?

A team of WHO investigators entered a heavily guarded Wuhan Virology Institute this morning – the lab at the centre of Covid-19 conspiracy theories that conducts research on the world’s most dangerous diseases.

The team, led by virus expert Peter Ben Embarek, is probing the origins of Covid-19 to understand how the virus jumped from animal to human.

There was speculation early in the pandemic that the virus may have been accidentally leaked from the lab. But there is no evidence to back up this theory. Trump infamously caught wind of the rumours and ran with them, even claiming that China deliberately leaked the virus.

Shi Zhengli, one of China’s leading experts on bat coronaviruses and deputy director of the Wuhan lab, admitted in a June 2020 interview that she was initially anxious about whether the virus had leaked from the facility. But she says her fears were put to bed after subsequent checks revealed that none of the gene sequences matched the viruses held by the lab.

WHO officials arrived in Wuhan last month after having been repeatedly denied access by Beijing. They’ve already visited a hospital where many of the first victims were treated, and the wet food market where the first reported clusters of infections emerged. The world is holding its breath to hear what – if anything – they come back with.

Escape from Iran

A British-Iranian academic has carried out a daring escape from Iran, where he was facing a nine-year jail sentence for “co-operating with a hostile state power.”

Kameel Ahmady skipped bail and crossed the country’s North Western border on foot over a treacherous mountain range in deep snow and freezing temperatures, evading Iranian border patrols on paths used by smugglers. He eventually found his way to London.

This is what he says about his Houdini-like escape: “I just simply left. I packed my bag with a shaving kit, a few books of mine, and a laptop and warm clothes… It was very cold, very long, very dark and very scary.”

Ahmady, a social anthropologist focussing on female genital mutilation (FGM) and child marriage in Iran, was first arrested by Revolutionary Guards in Tehran in 2019.

He reckons he was arrested because of his dual nationality, his academic interests and as retaliation for Britain seizing an Iranian oil tanker off Gibraltar that was suspected of breaking EU sanctions.

Ahmady fled while released on bail after a three-month stint in Iran’s notorious Evin prison, where Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, another dual national imprisoned by Iran, has previously been held. Ahmady said: “I decided to escape because I couldn’t see myself staying in prison for 10 years and watching my son from a distance growing up.”

Mattie Brignal,
News Editor