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Does it spread more easily? Make people sicker? Does that mean the treatments and vaccines won’t work? The questions are growing as fast as the new variants of the coronavirus, especially the one crossing England and now popping up in the United States and other countries.
Scientists say there is cause for concern and to learn more, but the new variants shouldn’t raise alarm bells.
Concern has grown since before Christmas, when the British Prime Minister said the coronavirus variant appeared to spread more easily than previous ones and was moving rapidly across England. Colorado health officials said they found him there on Tuesday.
Here are some questions and answers on what is known about the virus so far.
Q: WHERE DID THIS NEW VARIANT COME FROM? A: New variants have been seen almost since the virus was first detected in China almost a year ago. Viruses often mutate or develop small changes as they reproduce and travel through a population.
Most of the changes are trivial. “It’s the change of one or two letters in the genetic alphabet that doesn’t make much of a difference in the ability to cause disease,” said Dr. Philip Landrigan, former Scientist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who runs a global health program in Boston. University.
A more concerning situation is when a virus mutates by altering proteins on its surface to help it escape drugs or the immune system, or if it acquires many changes that make it very different from previous versions.
Q: HOW DOES A VARIANT BECOME DOMINANT? A: This can happen if a variant takes hold and begins to spread in an area, or because “super diffusor” events have helped it become established.
It can also happen if a mutation gives a new variant an advantage, for example by helping it to spread more easily than others that are circulating.
Scientists are still working to confirm if the variant spreads in England more easily, but they are finding evidence that it does. The variant “outperforms other strains and travels faster and infects more people, so it wins the race,” Landrigan said.
The British variant was first detected in September, WHO officials said. A new South African variant has also appeared.
Q: WHAT IS WORRIED ABOUT THE BRITISH VARIANT? A: It has many mutations – almost two dozen – and eight are on the spike protein that the virus uses to attach itself and infect cells. The peak is the target of vaccines and antibodies.
Dr Ravi Gupta, a virus expert at the University of Cambridge in England, said modeling studies suggest it could be up to twice as infectious as the most common version in England so far. He and other researchers posted a report about it on a website that scientists use to quickly share developments, but it has not been officially reviewed or published in a journal.
Q: DOES THIS MAKE PEOPLE SICKER OR MORE LIKELY TO DIE? A: “There is no indication that either of these is true, but these are clearly two issues that we need to watch out for,” Landrigan said. As more and more patients are infected with the new variant, “they’ll know pretty quickly if the new strain is making people sicker.” WHO outbreak specialist Maria Van Kerkhove said “the information we have so far is that there is no change” in the type of disease or its severity.
Q: WHAT DO MUTATIONS MEAN FOR TREATMENTS? A: A few cases in England raise concerns that mutations in some of the newer variants emerging could interfere with the potency of drugs that deliver antibodies to prevent the virus from infecting cells.
Studies on the antibody response are ongoing, Van Kerkhove said.
A drug maker, Eli Lilly, said tests in his lab suggested his drug remains fully active.
Q: WHAT ABOUT VACCINES? A: Scientists believe that current vaccines will still be effective against the variant, but they are working to confirm this. British officials on Wednesday reiterated that there was no data to suggest that the new variant harms the effectiveness of available vaccines.
The vaccines induce broad immune system responses in addition to simply causing the immune system to make antibodies against the virus, so they should keep working, several scientists have said.
Q: WHAT CAN I DO TO REDUCE MY RISK? A: Follow tips for wearing a mask, washing your hands often, maintaining social distancing, and avoiding crowds, public health experts say.
“Ultimately, we have to suppress the transmission” of the coronavirus, said WHO director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“The more we allow it to spread, the more mutations there will be.”
(Disclaimer: This story was not edited by www.republicworld.com and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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