The UK is facing five waves of Covid a year, with the latest Arcturus strain set to impact the country in three ways, an expert has warned.
Virologist Dr Lennard Lee spoke as Arcturus was blamed for a major hike in Covid cases in India, while as of April 11, 66 cases of the new variant had been detected here.
Dr Lee warned the UK would continue to face multiple waves of Covid in coming years, The Express reports.
He said: “We're starting to see patterns now. So the virus doesn't appear to be dying out. It seems to be hitting our shores, a new variant anywhere in the world, every two months at the moment.
“I think last year, we had five waves of virus hitting coming to us and again, it looks like we're going have another five waves - this is another wave which will probably come start to ramp up again.”
Dr Lee predicted three ways the UK will be affected by the current Arcturus strain.
He said: “The first one is that vulnerable patients will be put at excess risk - people who can't respond to the virus because they are on chemo because they’ve got a blood cancer, or because they are immunosuppressants for example.
“I think our vulnerable will be affected and we'll continue to see those people end up in hospital.
“And I think that's sad, because with any surge, the vulnerable people end up in the hospital.
“I think it's about 4,000 to 5,000 people a week who will end up in hospital until a hospital will be impacted and when we've got the waiting lists we have, it can be hard to deal with those people on top of everything else.”
The second impact is an increase in long Covid, Dr Lee said.
He continued: “We're seeing a lot of people slow to recover from the virus and sometimes the recovery type takes many many months or years.
“So that's the impact on our economy now, people not able to work because they've been afflicted quite badly by the virus.”
Finally, Dr Lee was also concerned schools may be forced to close if significant numbers of children start falling ill, and about the consequent disruption to education.
He said: “If Arcturus does start to have obvious conjunctivitis symptoms, the schools and their education can be affected and parents can be pulled out of work again."
It was reassuring that - so far at least - Arcturus did not appear to be any more deadly than previous strains, Dr Lee said.
However, he said: “Five waves of a disease hitting us every year is unusual.
“This is not like flu - this is very different. The most difficult thing is that this can hit us in the middle of summer where you don't expect to have respiratory viruses.
“And largely, it can come from anywhere in the world and then come across here.”
As things stood, public health officials were reliant on the virus either ceasing to evolve or continuing to be a very mild disease, Dr Lee pointed out.
But he added: “The problem is that evolution is unpredictable. We don't know what's going to happen in the future at the moment. I think we're very lucky that this Arcturus is not a severe virus, but it will impact these three areas, vulnerable people, causing more long Covid and affecting children going to school.
“We cannot predict how this virus is going to evolve, that's the first thing.
“We are very lucky that Arcturus is not more severe.
“But the issue is that variants can happen anywhere in the world and that evolution of the virus is entirely unpredictable.”
The Independent SAGE adviser and Academic Clinical Lecturer in Medical Oncology at the University of Oxford said he and colleagues were monitoring Arcturus carefully.
He explained: “It's got new mutations on it which allow it to spread slightly better, not greatly better, but slightly better, and it has driven the recent surge across India.
“What we’re seeing at the moment is slightly different in terms of what it looks like in humans.”
He said: “There's early data showing that it affects the eyes and it causes conjunctivitis.
“What it really points to is that this virus is clever, and it is continuing to evolve with time.
“The tricky thing is that what's happening is viruses are emerging around the world and they spread very, very quickly nowadays, so they come to our shores very quickly.”
It was still unclear whether Arcturus would eventually become the UK’s dominant variant, Dr Lee stressed.
He said: “I think it became the dominant way for India pretty quickly.
“The difficult thing is these variants can happen anywhere in the world and when they come, they sweep over the last version and bring a new wave through.
“It’s very hard to predict but what we do know is that we're seeing patterns now and the pattern is, a variant will emerge and it will spread across the world.
“It is in the UK. We haven't really seen it taken off just yet but the UKHSA is monitoring that.”
Dr Lee did not envisage the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) stepping up restrictions as a result of the emergence of Arcturus.
He said: “I think we've got into this strategy of living with Covid so I don't envisage that there's going to be any change from the Department of Health.
“I think ultimately, it'll be like the Kraken variant where a large number of us gets infected and most of us will probably be okay with it because we are protected.
“So I doubt there'll be any public health changes or immediate changes in terms of what we noticed as individuals in terms of our liberties; I don’t think they will be impacted.”
Looking to the future, Dr Lee said: “This virus is much more intelligent and much more creative than I thought it would possibly be, because it wants to survive and spread.
“We do very much have an arms race between our immune systems versus how this virus is able to evade it.
“It's almost like we've ended up in a stalemate where our immune system can keep it mild at the moment, but it's not eradicating it across humanity, the global population as a whole.”
