COVID-19 beta variant: everything you need to know

Viruses evolve. SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is no exception. So the emergence of variants is not surprising, and not all genetic mutations pose a serious threat.

England lifted almost all of its pandemic restrictions on Monday, which some Britons hailed as the “day of freedom”. However, the British government has one notable exception: people traveling to England from France must continue to be quarantined upon arrival, even if they are fully vaccinated.

The rule, announced on Friday, was led Concerns about the presence of the beta variant of the coronavirus in France and it is a precautionary measure, authorities said.

“While vaccines help us turn the tide against this virus, we must continue to act with caution ”, said the doctor Jenny Harry, executive director of the British Health Safety Agency, in a press release on Friday. “This means maintaining our defenses against new variants and protecting our hard-earned progress with the exceptional vaccine launch. “

Here are the answers to some of the most common beta variant questions.

What is the beta variant?

The variant Beta, formerly known as B.1.351, was first detected in South Africa Last year. Contains various mutations, in a protein called pico, that help the virus to bind more tightly to human cells.

Too contains the E484K mutation, sometimes known as a mutation “Eek”, which seems to help the virus to partially escape the antibodies. This mutation has arisen independently in multiple variations, included Gamma, which arose in Brazil, and in some samples of Alpha, which was first identified in Britain.

The World Health Organization and the The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has designated Beta as a “variant of concern.”

Why is this worrying?

Scientists and health officials are worried about Beta because It spread quickly across South Africa and research indicated that some vaccines were less potent against it.

In February, for example, South Africa has stopped using AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine after clinical trials suggested that the vaccine did not offer good protection against mild to moderate illnesses caused by beta. (However, later research suggested that several licensed vaccines offer strong protection against serious disease caused by the variant). Britain relied heavily on the vaccine AstraZeneca, which may explain your caution with Beta.

Certain treatments with monoclonal antibodies they are also less effective against the variant, although there are other authorized antibody treatments that appear to work well against it.

Ability of Beta to bind strongly to human cells too it can make it more communicable; the CDC notes that appears to be about 50 percent more infectious than the original strain of the virus. However, he doesn’t appear to be as contagious as Delta.

Where is it current?

Even if its presence has been reported in 123 countries, the variant keep on going being much less common than Delta.

Initially, The beta has spread widely in South Africa, where ever rrepresented more than 95 percent of virus samples sequenced in the country.

However, he is no longer so dominant. In the past four weeks, Beta only accounted for 5.6% of virus samples sequenced in South Africa, according to GISAID, a repository of viral genomes. (This decrease is probably due to the arrival of the highly contagious Delta variant, which now represents 77.6% of sequences).

For four weeks, the variant also represented 3.7% of virus samples sequenced in France, according to GISAID. It is particularly common in Réunion, a French island in the Indian Ocean where Beta represents 31.2% of the sequences.

Beta That’s not common in the USA, where represents only 0.1 percent of infections, according to CDC estimates. It was detected in Britain, but it represents a negligible proportion of infections.

Do beta vaccines work?

Vaccines they appear to be less potent against beta than against other versions of the virus. But studies suggest that two doses of various widely used vaccines should provide strong protection.

Studies in Qatar, where the beta variant once accounted for half of all infections, they found that two doses of Pfizer vaccine are 72 to 75 percent effective in preventing beta infection, a lower degree of protection than that provided by inoculations against other variants. But the two vaccines Pfizer What Modern they provided strong protection against the worst outcomes; a full cycle of either vaccine was over 95 percent effective in preventing serious illness and death.

“Although the effectiveness of Pfizer it was only 75 percent against Beta and therefore infections are not uncommon, these sare mild and it is very rare for a fully vaccinated person to require serious hospitalization or die after a beta infection ”, assured in dialogue with The New York Times Laith Abu-Raddad, infectious disease epidemiologist Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar who led both studies.

More good news, he added, there are also no “signs” that the protection these vaccines offer against beta has diminished in the first few months after the injections. In a clinical trial in South Africa, conducted when beta was dominant, the vaccine Johnson & johnson had an effectiveness rate of 64 percent in general, but an efficiency of 82 percent in the prevention of serious illnesses.

KEEP READING: