New Covid Variant Found In Kentucky Nursing Home Has Deadly Mutations That Could Leak Virus Antibodies

A NEW variant of COVID-19 with fatal mutations that gives it “increased resistance to antibodies” has been discovered in a Kentucky nursing home.

The variant, called R.1, infected 45 residents and staff at the facility, some of whom were fully vaccinated.

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R.1 is originally from Japan and has now accumulated more than 10,000 entries in the GISAID SARS-CoV-2 database, which researchers are using to record genomic data.

Scientist William A. Haseltine writes in Forbes: “R.1 is a variant to watch out for. It gained a foothold in Japan and the United States.

He added that it has several unique mutations that could give it advantages in “transmission, replication and immune suppression.”

One of them, a mutation called E484K located in the spike protein of the virus, gives it “increased resistance” to the antibodies generated by the vaccine.

R.1 shares an additional mutation, D614G, with all other variants that have outgrown the original alpha strain, increasing its infectivity.

It comes as the world hits the grim milestone of 229 million global COVID infections and a death toll of 4.7 million on Tuesday, according to a Johns Hopkins tracker.

The United States continues to dominate the world in number of infections, with 4.23 million cases and 676,261 total deaths.

The average number of daily deaths from the virus in the United States has reached 2,087, the highest since March of this year.

Meanwhile, an FDA advisory committee voted unanimously on Friday to approve booster shots for adults over 65 or at serious health risk at any age.

Reminders will be made available to eligible people six months after the second dose of vaccine.

The same panel voted 16-2 against allowing a recall to the general public.

White House chief medical adviser Dr Anthony Fauci said on Monday that new data on booster shots from Moderna and Johnson & Johnson will be available in the coming weeks.

“The actual data that we will get [on] that third hit for Moderna and the second for J&J is literally a few weeks away, ”he told NBC’s“ Meet the Press ”.

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