ウィスパリング同時通訳研究会コミュのNew UK variant 'may be more deadly', Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson: (00:00)
Good afternoon. Thanks for joining us. Since the beginning of this pandemic we've tried to update you as soon as possible about changes in the scientific data or the analysis. So I must tell you this afternoon that we’ve been informed today that in addition to spreading more quickly, it also now appears that there is some evidence that the new variant, the variant that was first identified in London and the Southeast, may be associated with a higher degree of mortality..
And I’m going to ask Patrick in a minute to say a bit more about that, because it’s largely the impact of this new variant that means the NHS is under such intense pressure with another 40,261 positive cases since yesterday. We have 38,562 COVID patients now in hospital, and that’s 78% higher than the first peak in April. And tragically, there have been a further 1,401 deaths. So it’s more important than ever that we all remain vigilant in following the rules and that we stay at home, protect the NHS, and thereby save lives.
(01:07)
But I also want to answer a key question I know will be uppermost in your minds. All current evidence continues to show that both the vaccines we’re currently using remain effective both against the old variant and this new variant. And so you’ll also want to know that our immunization program continues at an unprecedented rate. 5.4 million people across the UK have now received their first dose of the vaccine. And over the last 24 hours, we can report a record 400,000 vaccinations. In England, one in 10 of all adults have received that first dose, including 71% of over eighties and two thirds of elderly care home residents. Having secured orders for hundreds of millions of doses, the UK government has supplied vaccines to the devolved administrations according to population size. First doses have been administered now to 151,000 people in Northern Ireland, 358,000 in Scotland and 212,000 in Wales. And I’m glad that the governor of the UK, the whole of the UK, is able to assist the devolved administrations in deploying the vaccine. And I know everyone across the country is grateful for the logistical skill of the British Army.
(02:35)
There is much more to do, and the target remains very stretched indeed, but we remain on track to reach our goal of offering a first dose to everyone in the top four priority groups by the middle of February. And I want to thank all the doctors and nurses, especially at the GP led sites who are vaccinating at a phenomenal rate. As well as I say, as those in our armed forces, our local or authorities, our pharmacies and volunteers who are making this extraordinary national effort possible.
(03:12)
And I want to thank all of you who have come forward to get your jabs, because by doing that, you’re protecting yourselves, your communities, and of course, our NHS. And I say to everyone, when that letter arrives, please don’t hesitate to book that appointment and get this life saving protection because this is the best and fastest way for us all to defeat this virus and get our lives back to normal.
(03:44)
I’m now going to ask Chris to do the slides.

Chris: (03:46)
Thank you Prime Minister. First slide please. (03:49)
So the first slide is the Office of National Statistics data showing the estimated number of people testing positive for COVID-19 in England. And that has been on a steady, upward slope since the early part of December. But I’m glad to say that in the most recent data, there has been a turning of the corner on that. And the number of people with infections has gone down, but it has gone down from an exceptionally high level. And their most recent estimate is we’re still at a stage in England where one in 55 people have the virus. So there is a definite signs of improvement, but from a very high level, remaining at a very high level, thanks to the extraordinary work that everybody has done together to make sure people stay at home when they do not need to go outside.(04:39)
Next slide, please. This then looks at the number of people in hospital with COVID in the UK and it is increasing all the time. It has been over the last several weeks and is now at an extraordinarily high level as the Prime Minister has just said, but there is no sign of this beginning to flatten out. In some parts of England, particularly the Southeast, the East of England and London, there’s now signs of some reduction in the numbers going into hospital, but at an incredibly high rate still. In other areas, there’s still some increase in parts of the Midlands and the North of England, for example, but overall there is now a flattening out and we hope to see, following the reductions from a high level in the number of cases, the beginnings of a reduction of cases in hospital, but this will take some weeks to work through the system until we start to see significant falls in the numbers in hospital. NHS staff are working extraordinarily hard across the whole country because of the very, very large numbers of people in hospital with COVID. (05:53)
Next slide, please. And sadly, the number of people who have had a positive test for COVID and then died shortly afterwards, is continuing to climb. And because this is later, this is a delayed effect. So people get infections, then they end up going to hospital, get some more severely ill. And then sadly, some of them die. Most obviously recover. The number of people who are dying has been steadily increasing. And the most recent seven day rolling average is over a thousand deaths a day. So this is a very high rate and it, again, it will take longer to come down and probably will go up over the next week because of the fact there’s a delay between people going into hospital. And some people are sadly dying.(06:45)
On that, I’ll hand over to Patrick, for some comments about the new variant.

Patrick: (06:49)
Thank you very much. So there are three major variants of a potential concern. The one that was first identified in the UK, one that was identified in South Africa, and one that was identified in Brazil. Three countries, all of which sequence a lot, and so picked these things up early. I want to talk about the UK one because it’s a common variant now comprising a significant number of the cases.
(07:13)
The first thing to say is that we have confidence that this is spreading more easily than the old variants. So we think it transmits between 30 and 70% more easily than the old variant. We don’t yet understand why that is the case. It doesn’t have a difference in terms of age distribution. So there’s no preferential age. It can affect anybody at any age, similarly to the original variant, the original virus.
(07:44)
But I do want to say a word about severity and mortality. When we look at data from hospitals, so patients who are in hospital with the virus, the outcomes for those with the original virus or the new variant look the same. So there’s no real evidence of an increase in mortality for those in hospital. However, when data are looked at, in terms of those who’ve been tested positive, so anyone who’s tested positive, there is evidence that there’s an increased risk for those who have the new variant compared to the old virus. Now that evidence is not yet strong. It’s a series of different bits of information that come together to support that. And I want to put it into context as to what it might mean, but stressing that these data currently uncertain, and we don’t have a very good estimate of the precise nature or indeed, whether it is overall increased, but it looks like it is. And I want to give some context.
(08:47)
If you took somebody in their sixties, a man in their sixties, the average risk is that for a thousand people who got infected, roughly 10 would be expected to unfortunately die with the virus. With the new variant for a thousand people infected, roughly 13 or 14 people might be expected to die. So that’s the sort of change for that sort of age group, an increase from 10 to 13 or 14 out of a thousand. And you will see that across the different age groups as well, a similar sort of relative increase in the risk. So that’s what we’re looking at, but I want to stress that there’s a lot of uncertainty around these numbers and we need more work to get a precise handle on it. But it obviously is of concern that this has an increase in mortality, as well as an increase in transmissibility, as it appears of today.
(09:48)
Let me say also a word about vaccines. The first is that there’s increasing evidence from laboratory studies that the variant in the UK will be susceptible to the vaccines. And so I think that’s increasing from a number of different sources, including looking at sera, blood taken from people who’ve been vaccinated showing that it can neutralize the new virus. And indeed just two days ago, one of the manufacturers of one of the vaccines, the Pfizer BioNTech team, the BioNTech team actually did studies showing that there was very good neutralization of the variant virus by the blood taken from patients or people who’ve been vaccinated. So I think there’s increasing confidence coupled with, I think what is a very important clinical observation, which is that individuals who’ve been infected previously and have generated antibodies appear to be equally protected against original virus and new variant. So there’s good clinical data as well to support the idea that the vaccines should be as effective against this virus as against the old one or thereabouts. So I think good news on the vaccine front.
(11:07)
And then finally a word just about the South African and Brazilian variants. We know less about how much more transmissible they are. We are more concerned that they have certain features, which means they might be less susceptible to vaccines. We will see a lot of information coming out from different laboratories. It’s very difficult to compare between laboratories on this data, and we need to get more clinical information to understand how much of an effect, if any, there is on the vaccine, but they are definitely of more concern than the one in the UK at the moment. And we need to keep looking at it and studying this very carefully, which is what’s going on in the laboratories across the world at the moment.

Boris Johnson: (11:51)Thanks very much, Patrick. And thank you, Chris. Let’s go to Tracy in [inaudible 00:11:56] Wales.

Tracy: (11:57)We were initially told that we would need two vaccinations against COVID-19 three weeks apart. (12:02)
Patients against COVID-19, three weeks apart. The first giving approximately 50% protection, then rising to 95% after the second dose. However, the two vaccinations are now up to 12 weeks apart. Will this reduce the levels of protection from either dose, and if so, by what percentage?
Boris Johnson: (12:24)
Well, thank you very much, Tracy. A very important question. I know that Jonathan Van-Tam was asked that a few weeks ago, but Chris, why don’t you take that?
Chris: (12:33)
Okay. Thank you, prime minister. The thing with the two vaccines … so the first thing is we are absolutely clear that everybody needs two vaccinations. The first gives the great majority, as far as we can see, of the initial protection, but the second vaccine increases that and probably makes it longer-lasting as well. So, we are still very much committed to two vaccinations. The reason for extending the course of the vaccination is primarily to double the number of people who can get vaccinated. So, there’s a public health decision, and the reason for, that we think that this is a reasonable thing to do, is that because our major limitation is the number of vaccinations we actually have to give. It’s not our ability to vaccinate. It’s the number of vaccines we have to give. If you vaccinate everybody twice in quick succession, half the number of people will be able to be vaccinated over the next short to medium term, the next several weeks to three-month period.
(13:40)
So, by extending the time, what we’re allowing is many more people to be vaccinated much more quickly, and then they will get their second vaccine, but they will do so with many more people vaccinated. So, that’s the broad reason and both process of relatively simple math, you can think that if a vaccine is more than 50% effective, if you double the number of people who are vaccinated over this very, very risky period, when there’s a lot of virus circulating and likely to be that, you’re overall going to get some substantial benefit. Now, the question you asked is about will the person who’s been vaccinated once have the same protection as someone who’s vaccinated twice? The answer is slightly different probably between the two vaccines that we currently have deployed in the UK, the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine and the Oxford AZ vaccine.
(14:35)
But in both cases, we think that the great majority of the protection is given by the first vaccine, and the second one is going to top that up and to extend it over time. But we do actually have confidence that there will be a loss of protection after the first vaccination. Now, of course, we’ll keep that under review, as new data comes in, but there are several lines of data that make us think it is likely that once you get protection, initially, it lasts for a reasonable period of time, including people who’ve had the natural infection, where they seem to have protection for many months, certainly up to five months in the majority of cases. It also looks as if that’s the case with several different vaccine types, which have been tried with one vaccine and then a later dose later on, and they all have the same, essentially the same active component.
(15:25)
This is what’s called a spike protein and they seem to work. So, that is the reason why we think it is likely that this is a reasonable thing to do. I get quite a lot of emails giving me advice from members of the public and members of the medical profession. In general, people who’ve been vaccinated, tend to say, why can’t I have my vaccine more quickly, and people who have not been vaccinated to say, why can’t I have my first vaccine? Those are both reasonable positions that people are taking. But the reality is that by doing this longer interval, many more people, essentially in the medium term, twice as many people will get a first vaccine, which provides the majority of the protection. That is the reason we’re doing it.
Boris Johnson: (16:07)Thanks, Chris. Patrick, anything you want to add?
Patrick: (16:09)n[inaudible 00:16:09].

Boris Johnson: (16:11)
Thank you very much. Let’s go, just to go to Sally in Oxfordshire. Sally from Oxfordshire asks are those of us who have had the vaccine now allowed to mix together with others who have been vaccinated? Again, I think I’d probably better defer to Chris and Patrick on that. Chris.
Chris: (16:27)
Oh, several things to say, The first one is, even with a very effective vaccine and the two vaccines we currently have are very effective, there is a period of time straight after the vaccine, where there is no effect. You don’t expect to see with these vaccines, and you don’t see in the clinical trials of any of the vaccines an effect for two or three weeks after the first vaccine. So, the first thing is you have virtually no protection initially, and then that protection will steadily increase from two to three weeks onwards, and probably continues to increase over time. But that protection will not be complete, and even with two vaccines, it won’t be complete. It’s probably a bit less with the first vaccine, and at the moment, a very large proportion of the people you might come into contact with could well have the virus.
(17:16)
You saw the data right at the beginning, and what they showed is that at this point in time, across the England, as a whole, on average, one in 55 people have got the virus and in places like London, where there’s a lot, it drops to maybe one in 35. So, the risk is, if you have the vaccine, you still have some residual risk, and the person you’re meeting is probably not vaccinated, and there’s a high chance they have the virus. So, we need to do three things, vaccinate people who are at risk as we are, and get them their second dose. We need to vaccinate the rest of the population so that the person they come into contact with is vaccinated, and we need to get the rates above all, the rates of the virus right down.
(17:57)
That’s what everybody is doing by staying at home. Only going out for essential things like exercise, work and essential shopping. That is what is happening, it is getting the rates right down, so if you do go out and you’ve had the vaccine, ideally the second vaccine, you’ll meet people who have been vaccinated, because there’s more vaccine and the rates are much, much lower, so your chance of meeting someone with the vaccine improves. So, over time, the answer will be yes, but at this point in time, the answer would be, no, we think you should still be very cautious. And, like everybody else, you should be staying at home and not going out, except when you need to for exercise, essential things or work. Patrick do you want to-

Patrick: (18:35)[inaudible 00:18:35] I think to answer that, which is that the vaccines are very effective at protecting severe disease and symptomatic disease. We still don’t know exactly how effective they are at stopping you from catching the virus or passing the virus on. So, it’s very important for people who are vaccinated, even if they’re after two or three weeks, not to assume that they can’t catch it and pass it on to somebody else. That’s why it’s important that we all stick to the rules at the moment, until the rates come right down, and it’s possible to release some of the measures.