- There is no clear-cut evidence the new variant of coronavirus is able to transmit more easily, cause more serious symptoms or render the vaccine useless.
- However, there are two reasons scientists are keeping a close eye on it.
- The first is that levels of the variant are higher in places where cases are higher.
- It is a warning sign, although it can be interpreted in two ways.
- The virus could have mutated to spread more easily and is causing more infections.
According to a recent news article published in BBC, written by James Gallagher, new Coronavirus strain is still trying out different combinations of mutations to properly nail infecting humans.
Spanish strain
But variants can also get a lucky break by infecting the right people at the right time.
One explanation for the spread of the ‘Spanish strain’ over the summer was simply people catching it on holiday and then bringing it home.
Need for experiments
It will take experiments in the laboratory to figure out if this variant really is a better spreader than all the others.
The other issue that is raising scientific eyebrows is how the virus has mutated.
“It has a surprisingly large number of mutations, more than we would expect, and a few look interesting,” Prof Nick Loman from the COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) Consortium told me.
We do know there’s a variant
Prof Alan McNally, from the University of Birmingham, said: “We know there’s a variant, we know nothing about what that means biologically.”
“It is far too early to make any inference on how important this may or may not be.”
Vaccine to train immune system
Mutations to the spike protein lead to questions about the vaccine because the three leading jabs – Pfizer, Moderna and Oxford – all train the immune system to attack the spike.
However, the body learns to attack multiple parts of the spike. That is why health officials remain convinced the vaccine will work against this variant.
This is a virus that evolved in animals and made the jump to infecting people around a year ago.
Since then it has been picking up around two mutations a month – take a sample today and compare it to the first ones from Wuhan in China and there would be around 25 mutations separating them.
Coronavirus is still trying out different combinations of mutations to properly nail infecting humans.
Kinds of mutation
The mutation N501 (I did warn you) alters the most important part of the spike, known as the “receptor-binding domain”.
The other mutation – a H69/V70 deletion – has emerged several times before, including famously in infected mink.
The emergence and global dominance of another variant (G614) is seen by many as the virus getting better at spreading.
Mass vaccination
But soon mass vaccination will put a different kind of pressure on the virus because it will have to change in order to infect people who have been immunized.
If this does drive the evolution of the virus, we may have to regularly update the vaccines, as we do for flu, to keep up.
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Source: BBC
