Living in a Variant World
The Briefing Room
BBC
4.8 • 731 Ratings
🗓️ 2 December 2021
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What are variants? Where do they come from? Why do they develop and how do they take over? Currently Delta is the dominant variant in the UK and across much of the world; but now Omicron, first identified in South Africa, looks like it could take over. How does that happen? And what can we do about variants?
Joining David Aaronovitch in the Briefing Room are:
Emma Thomson, Professor of infectious diseases at the University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research. Dr. Jeff Barrett, Director of the Covid-19 genomics initiative at the Wellcome Sanger Institute. Dr. Charlotte Houldcroft, virologist from the University of Cambridge.
Producers: John Murphy, Ben Carter and Kirsteen Knight Studio Manager: Graham Puddifoot Editor: Richard Vadon
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.0 | Welcome to the briefing room with me, David Aronovich. |
| 0:08.0 | It's the lab where we examine viral stories with the help of the top experts. |
| 0:13.5 | And this week, the latest COVID variant has impacted the stock market almost before it has affected many humans. |
| 0:20.0 | So where does Omicron fit into the mutating |
| 0:23.8 | COVID story? Omicron, as much an expostulation as a COVID variant. We started with |
| 0:34.2 | plain COVID. We're upended by the Alpha variant, are still being smacked around by the |
| 0:39.6 | Delta variant, and now are waiting for Omicron. So what are variants? How do they come about? How do |
| 0:47.4 | some get to be so much more dangerous than others? What's this new one like? And when will we reach |
| 0:53.4 | that happy stage when it's all just like a seasonal cold? |
| 0:57.8 | Step into the briefing room and together we'll find out. |
| 1:03.8 | Let's start with a potted history of the variants of SARS-CoV-2, as this coronavirus is called, |
| 1:13.5 | the one first recognised in Wuhan in China. |
| 1:18.7 | Here's the briefing room's Ben Carter with the Alpha to Omicron of Variance. |
| 1:29.9 | It sometimes seems hard to believe, but the first cases of COVID-19 were being reported only two years ago. |
| 1:34.6 | The world has changed a lot in that time, and so has the virus. |
| 1:41.1 | Viruses mutate, and COVID is no different, and that's led to variants, thousands of them. |
| 1:46.1 | But a very small number of those have attracted the attention of scientists around the world. |
| 1:51.2 | The World Health Organisation came up with a naming system for these. |
| 1:57.6 | They look out for ones along with the rest of the world, ones that may cause extra problems for us. |
| 2:00.6 | Michelle Roberts is the BBC's Health Online editor. |
| 2:06.3 | They're concerned about changes to the virus that could make it more easy to catch, more transmissible, or if it makes it more virulent or dangerous to us, if it causes even more |
... |
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