People infected with the coronavirus variant found in the UK are up to 64% more likely to die
A coronavirus variant first detected in the UK is deadlier than the original version of the virus.
People infected with the strain, B.1.1.7, are 55% to 64% more likely to die from COVID-19.
The data is in: People infected with the coronavirus variant first discovered in the UK have a higher risk of dying from COVID-19 than those who get other versions of the virus.
New research published Monday in the journal Nature found that among cases involving the variant, known as B.1.1.7, patients had a 55% higher chance of death within four weeks following their positive test.
The study authors examined roughly 2.2 million people who tested positive in England between September and mid-February, then compared the number of deaths among those with B.1.1.7 to those who were infected with other strains.
After controlling for variables including a patient's age, sex, ethnicity, and living arrangement, the researchers found that with the original virus, about six out of every 1,000 people in their 60s who test positive might be expected to die. But this number rises to about nine out of 1,000 with B.1.1.7.
"In spite of substantial advances in COVID-19 treatment, we have already seen more deaths in 2021 than we did over the first eight months of the pandemic in 2020.
In January and February, 42,000 people in England died of COVID-19.
Mounting evidence shows the B.1.1.7 variant is more deadly
B.1.1.7 was discovered outside London in September, but initial evidence suggested the strain wasn't more lethal. Then in January, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the variant was likely associated with higher mortality.
Research published last week in the journal BMJ confirmed that. It found B.1.1.7 to be deadlier than other strains - and even more deadly than the Nature study results suggest.
The BMJ researchers examined nearly 55,000 pairs of people in the UK. Within each pair, one person had tested positive for B.1.1.7 while the other had tested positive for a different coronavirus strain (including the variants from South Africa and Brazil). The members of each pair had similar ages, ethnicities, and geographic locations, and got their positive test results between October and February.
The study found the B.1.1.7 variant was 64% deadlier than the other strains within the four weeks following a positive test.
Researchers from the University of Exeter, meanwhile, looked at samples collected between October and late January and found that people infected with the variant were almost twice as likely to die.
B.1.1.7 is between 50% and 70% more contagious than the original version of the virus.
The number of daily COVID-19 cases there skyrocketed in the four months following B.1.1.7's discovery, jumping from 3,899 new cases on September 20 to more than 68,000 cases on January 8. The spike in cases strained UK hospitals and healthcare resources, which may have hurt patient outcomes.
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