SARS-CoV-2 Alpha variant
variant of SARS-CoV-2
The Alpha variant (B.1.1.7) was a SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern. It was estimated to be 40–80% more transmissible than the wild-type SARS-CoV-2 (with most estimates occupying the middle to higher end of this range). Scientists more widely took note of this variant in early December 2020, when a phylogenetic tree showing viral sequences from Kent, United Kingdom looked unusual.
The variant began to spread quickly by mid-December, around the same time as infections surged. This increase is thought to be at least partly because of one or more mutations in the virus' spike protein. The variant was also notable for having more mutations than normally seen. By January 2021, more than half of all genomic sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 was carried out in the UK. This gave rise to questions as to how many other important variants were circulating around the world undetected.
On 2 February 2021, Public Health England reported that they had detected "[a] limited number of B.1.1.7 VOC-202012/01 genomes with E484K mutations", which they dubbed Variant of Concern 202102/02 (VOC-202102/02). One of the mutations (N501Y) was also present in Beta variant and Gamma variant. On 31 May 2021, the World Health Organization announced that the Variant of Concern would be labelled "Alpha" for use in public communications.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “SARS-CoV-2 Alpha variant” as variant of SARS-CoV-2. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as variant of SARS-CoV-2. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q104376647. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2020 and 2021.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “SARS-CoV-2 Alpha variant” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.