Hundreds of new Covid variants have been in UK, says Black Country public health boss
Hundreds of different coronavirus variants have been in the country since the pandemic began, said a director of public health.
Dr Lisa McNally, who works at Sandwell Council, said the Kent variant is the dominant one, which emerged in January.
But she says newer variants, such as the stronger South African one, are trying to break through.
Dr McNally, said: "There have been hundreds of different variants. That is what viruses do, they adapt and mutate.
"Up until Christmas, there was one particular set of viruses which dominated from spring straight through to December.
"But when the Kent variant emerged, case rates went up. In a very short amount of time, that Kent variant became dominant to the point it was in 90 per cent of samples.
"That shows how powerful that variant is in terms of transmitting itself. It really was supercharged.
"That is still our dominant strain. In Sandwell today, if you are going to be infected with the virus, it will be the Kent variant.
"The one saving grace is it is susceptible to vaccination effects. When you are vaccinated, it is very effective against that new variant."
Dr McNally said vaccines are less effective against other new strains - such as the South African and Brazilian variants - but still work.
She also said the dominance of the Kent strain is stopping the South African variant from breaking through.
She said: "What keeps us awake about these new, new variants is their ability - the phrase microbiologists use - is to escape the vaccine.
"The antibody response produced by the vaccine is not quite as effective.
"These new South African variants, and also the Brazilian variants - [the latter of] which we have not really seen much of in this country - have a mutation in them which makes them, potentially anyway, more resistant to the immunity produced by vaccination."
But she added: "Even this South African is still very susceptible to the vaccine.
"If you are vaccinated, you have got a lot of protection against the South African variant. It is just not as you do against other strains."
Explaining the path of emerging viral strains in the country so far, she continued: "The first strains were taken over by the Kent strain. The Kent strain is very much occupying now.
"The South Variant has emerged, and is trying to break through.
"But because of a combination of the power of the Kent variant to dominate, and efforts to suppress the South African variant with surge testing, it has won a few battles but not any wars."
With the virus constantly mutating, Dr McNally said the country needs a "long term policy" which will need to see new variants "stamped out as quickly as possible".
That is why Sandwell Council has responded within days, not weeks, in tackling cases of the South African variant within the borough. "We don't waste any time," she said.
A worst case scenario, which would be highly unlikely, is a variant that would not respond to vaccines, said Dr McNally.
But she believes the country will reach a point where the response to coronavirus is no longer treated as an "emergency" - instead one more comparable to the flu.
She said: "Obviously the worst nightmare is a strain of the virus which the vaccine is completely ineffective against.
"That would be unlikely. All these different strains are cousins, they are not completely new viruses, they don't mutate completely into something new.
"For a new variant to emerge and have no susceptibility to the vaccination would be unlikely.
"The other thing is, we of course have produced this industry of vaccination development, specifically to coronavirus.
"You have already got pharma companies working on vaccinations, and tweaking them, to make them effective against the new variants."
She added: "We are never going to get to the point where Covid is a thing of the past, but we will get past the acute emergency response phase, at some point."
