Coronavirus: Why is the M variant more dangerous …

The Manaus variant of the coronavirus, called P1, is little known, but wakes up the alerts in the world because it’s more contagious, which has led several countries to suspend the flights of the South American giant, epicenter of the pandemic.

“The fear is justified, P1 is a more contagious variant and it spread very quickly to Brazil, which is a huge country and where the pandemic is out of control», Explains to AFP the microbiologist Natalia Pasternak, director of the Questao Institute of Sciences.

The P1 appeared last December in the city of Manaus, capital of the state of Amazonas, but it was not identified as a new variant until January, in Japan, among some travelers returning from this northern region. from Brazil.

The variant has also been detected in several South American countries, such as Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia, Peru and Venezuela. It also reached the United States, Canada, Germany and France, which on Monday announced the suspension of flights from Brazil and other countries.

Why is it more contagious?

Like the South African variant, P1 has the E484K mutation, which may cause more infections than other strains, according to some studies, because it requires more antibodies to resist the virus. It also has many variations in the Spike protein, through which the virus enters cells to infect them.

“It’s as if I had a master key that allows you to open several doors at the same time», Observes Jesem Orellana, researcher in Amazonia at the Fiocruz institute.

“And from an epidemiological point of view, the variant can destabilize areas where there is little control of viral circulation and with little infrastructure, causing the hospital collapse“, What This happened in Manaus, where dozens of patients died from lack of oxygen.

“And the Brazilian authorities would have been responsible, they would have isolated Manaus, as China did with Wuhan. But instead, they sent patients to other parts of the country, with companions, some of whom were infected with P1, ”laments Orellana.

The Brazilian government “should even have closed the borders to prevent this variant from reaching other countries, some poorer, like Peru, ”he added.

Is it more deadly?

So far, no study has concluded that P1 is more lethal. In preliminary investigations, Orellana found that P1 did not increase the death rate in hospitals in Manaus, compared to the first wave of the pandemic, in April 2020.

This analysis coincides with two studies published on Tuesday which found that the British variant does not lead to more serious cases of Covid-19.

Escalation of covid-19 deaths in Brazil in recent weeks due to collapsing hospitals “Because this variant is more contagious, but also because of the general relaxation” of the population in the face of preventive measures, “tired of quarantine measures”, adds Orellana.

Preliminary studies have shown that the Chinese vaccine CoronaVac, the most widely used in Brazil, is effective against P1, as well as against that of Pfizer and AstraZeneca.

How much has it spread to Brazil?

The P1 variant has spread over almost the entire Brazilian territory, although there is a lack of data to measure the percentage responsible for infections in each region.

“Brazil’s genomic surveillance is one of the worst in the world”, in terms of sequencing new strains “,it is not for nothing that we discovered the P1 almost 60 days later, in Japan“said Orellana.

The the uncontrolled circulation of the virus led to new mutations, with variants of the same strain, such as P2, which circulates in Rio de Janeiro, or P4, recently detected in Belo Horizonte, in the neighboring state of Minas Gerais.

“Brazil has become an open-air variant laboratory“said Orellana.

To avoid the circulation of these variants, “the ideal would be to have enough doses for a mass vaccination and a lockdown at the same time, as England or Israel did,” adds microbiologist Pasternak.

“But in Brazil we have neither: confinement, mainly due to a lack of political will”, to which is added that “we do not have enough doses for vaccination”, explains the specialist, sunderlining the “lack of national coordination” of the fight against the pandemic by the government of Jair Bolsonaro.