WHO advocates for expanded collaboration, monitoring of COVID variants
The COVID-19 reproduction "R" number in the UK is estimated between 1.0-1.4, the UK Health Ministry said last week.
By ZACHARY KEYSERNewly elected Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus attends a news conference at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland(photo credit: REUTERS)The World Health Organization (WHO) is looking to expand scientific research collaboration and monitoring of "emerging variants of SARS-CoV-2," the strain of the novel coronavirus, the United Nations (UN) health agency said on Tuesday.The announcement comes as news of more transmissible variants of the coronavirus are being discovered in nations across the globe, such as the United Kingdom, South Africa and Japan, among others.WHO convened a day-long virtual meeting with over 1,750 medical experts from 124 countries "to discuss critical knowledge gaps and research priorities for emerging variants of the virus." WHO also advocated for the "prompt" sharing of viral and serum samples globally between nations.“Science and research have played a vital role in responding to the pandemic since day one and will continue to be the heartbeat of everything WHO does,” WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in his welcome speech during the event.The collective consultation worked through six thematic subjects, including epidemiology and mathematical modelling, evolutionary biology, animal models, assays and diagnostics, clinical management and therapeutics and vaccines.The experts decided that there is an importance to focus research on the potential impact of these emerging variants on society, while coordinating the future research across the disciplines - using national data platforms to document critical clinical, epidemiological and viral data working towards facilitating the detection and overall assessment of the new variants, the WHO stated.“Our collective goal is to get ahead of the game and have a global mechanism to quickly identify and study variants of concern and understand their implications for disease control efforts,” said Head of WHO’s R&D Blueprint Dr. Ana Maria Henao Restrepo.Scientists say both the South African and UK variants are associated with a higher viral load, meaning a greater concentration of virus particles in patients' bodies, possibly contributing to increased transmission.The COVID-19 reproduction "R" number in the UK is estimated between 1.0-1.4, the UK Health Ministry said last week, similar to the most recent estimated figure before Christmas.The previous R value, published on Dec. 23, was between 1.1 and 1.3. An R value between 1.0-1.4 implies that for every 10 people that get COVID-19, they will pass it on to between 10 and 14 more.Genomic sequences for these variants are now being shared worldwide.“So far an astounding 350,000 sequences have been publicly shared, but most come from just a handful of countries. Improving the geographic coverage of sequencing is critical for the world to have eyes and ears on changes to the virus,” said WHO Technical Lead on COVID-19 Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove.