#CovidUnknowns: New variants

Kamran Abbasi hosts a panel of virologists and epidemiologists discussing the emergence and impact of new Covid-19 variants.

4.00 Welcome - Kamran Abbasi, executive editor of The BMJ MC Phil Hammond, Doctor and journalist for Private Eye 4.05 New variants: what are they, where do they come from, and what might they do? (Chair: George Davey Smith, University of Bristol) - Aine O’ Toole, PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh - Ravindra Gupta, professor of clinical microbiology, at the University of Cambridge - Wendy Barclay, chair in influenza virology at Imperial College London. 4.40 What do we know about how particular variants influence transmission, severity and immunity? (Chair: Kamran Abbasi, BMJ) - Muge Cevik, clinical fellow at the University of St Andrews) on B.1.1.7 (Kent) variant - Richard Lessells, Group Leader: KRISP University of KwaZulu-Natal on B.1.351 (South African) variant - Esther Sabino, departamento de Molestias Infecciosas e Parasitarias, University of Sao Paolo) on P1 (Brazillian) variant 5.15 Future of the pandemic (chair: Allyson Pollock, clinical professor of public health at the Newcastle University) - Jeffrey Barret, director of the COVID-19 Genomics Initiative at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, on Surveillance/genomics - Alexandra L. Phelan, Adjunct Professor in Global and Public Health Law at Georgetown University, Washington DC, on what variants mean for border closures - Akiko Iwasaki, Professor of Immunobiology and Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at Yale School of Medicine, on how variants affect vaccine efficacy and implications for policy