Coronavirus: the scientific community analyzes the appearance of the Epsilon variant | Report in Science magazine

As the worldwide vaccination campaign progresses, the presence of variants such as Delta cause great concern, and it is in this context that the scientific community analyzes the appearance of a new mutation, called Epsilon, after a study ensured that it is resistant to antibodies created by vaccines approved by the European Union.

Epsilon presents with a series of mutations that include it in the SarsCoV2 virus strain group, the so-called “care variants”. The biochemist Matthew McCallum, from the University of Washington in Seattle, studied mutations and published the research in the journal Science.

The analysis coordinated by McCallum was based on the analysis of 57 samples, in which he was able to observe three mutations that make him resistant to antibodies and found in the protein Spike, the medium that the virus uses to enter cells.

The data indicate that, with its three mutations, the Epsilon variant is resistant to both antibodies generated by messenger RNA vaccines and to those generated by the SarsCoV2 virus.

The published observations are based on the analysis of plasma collected from 15 people vaccinated with two doses of Modern, 33 vaccinated with two doses of Pfizer-BioNtech and 9 who had been infected with SarsCoV2.

Found in early 2021 in California, Epsilon had already spread to 34 other countries by May and according to the Gisaid database for four weeks it has already been present in 44 countries, including the United States, South Korea, India. and Japan.

In Europe, cases have been identified in Denmark (37 cases), Germany (10), Ireland and France (7), the Netherlands and Spain (5), Switzerland (4), Norway ( 3), Sweden, Finland and Italy (2) and Belgium (1).

From World Health Organization (WHO) monitor SARS-CoV-2 mutations to control their spread, among other things, and To date, they have identified eleven variants.