Date Published: 30/01/2021
ARCHIVED - Spanish Health Ministry estimates British variant accounts for up to 10% of positives in Spain
ARCHIVED ARTICLE
More than 350 cases have now been confirmed
The new Health Minister, Carolina Darias, has confirmed that 350 cases of the British variant of coronavirus have now been confirmed in Spain and estimates that suspected cases "may represent between 5 and 10 percent of the total."
The new Minister for Health made her statement on Friday in her first appearance before the Health and Consumption Commission of the Congress of Deputies, and dedicated a specific section of her discourse to update the latest data on the new variants of the coronavirus.
The Minister said that "the next few weeks will be key” in determining the extent of the spread of the variant, although emphasised that although the “British variant” is associated with higher transmissibility and could also be more virulent, "it does not seem to compromise the sensitivity of diagnostic tests or the effect of vaccines."
Darias assured Congress members that the Ministry, in collaboration with the autonomous communities, "are closely monitoring the variant," and reminded members that this week a national virus sequencing strategy had been approved and was being implemented, improving detection and sequencing capacity.
She also confirmed that, for the moment, no cases of the Brazilian variant have been detected to date and only one case of the South African variant, has been identified in Spain so far, in the Galician city of Vigo. This patient is a 30-year-old man, who has already been discharged and did not require hospital admission, linked to the naval industry and who had traveled to South Africa for work reasons. On his return from the trip, he reported symptoms compatible with the virus.
Although the British government knew about the spread of a new variant, the B.1.1.7 variant first detected in Kent, hence its’ nickname “British variant” mid-autumn, the extent of its spread was not made public until just before Christmas, by which time the new variant had been able to leave the shores of the UK and spread all over the world. At least 50 countries are now known to have confirmed detection of this variant.
The first cases in Spain were found in individuals known to have travelled to Spain from the UK before the British Government revealed the extent of its spread within the UK.
Although France immediately locked down its ports after the announcement had been made, by this point hundreds of travellers from the UK had taken advantage of a 2-week window between travel bans to drive through France into Spain without the need for a PCR test, some of them bringing the variant with them. In other cases, PCR tests had given a negative result, but travellers developed symptoms after arriving in Spain, as obviously it’s perfectly possible to contract the virus in the 72 hour window between taking a PCR test and travelling. In most instances, the first variants detected were found in people who had travelled from the UK as described above during this time period, although later detections of the variant have been secondary infections.
On Friday an article published in the “Science” journal stated that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was “very effective” against the British variant and researchers had found no loss of protection in tests.
On Friday the Basque Country raised the total of cases of the British variant detected to 60.
On Friday the Asturias regional health authority said that the detection of the variant in Asturias was “becoming more frequent”, confirming that detections of the variant had risen from 2% at the beginning of the month to 20% of all cases by the end of the month.