Lambda COVID variant ‘a potential threat to human society’, researchers say

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A vial of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine (Janssen) is on display at the Ambreck pharmacy in Milan, Italy. Scientists are concerned about the emergence of the lambda variant of the virus.

The threat posed by the Lambda variant of COVID-19, which may be more resistant to vaccines than the original version of the virus, is cause for concern.

Research by a team at the University of Tokyo, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, found that three mutations in Lambda’s spike protein help it resist neutralization by antibodies induced by the vaccine.

Meanwhile, two mutations in the Lambda variant – T76I and L452Q – make it more contagious than the COVID variant that swept the world in 2020.

The study’s findings published on BiorXiv on July 28 match the results – also not yet peer-reviewed – of a team in Chile that discovered that the variant could also escape the vaccine’s antibodies, Infection Control reported.

In June, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the Lambda variant, which appeared in Peru in August 2020 and recorded in cases in Texas and South Carolina, as a “variant of interest.”

He said Lambda, also known as the C.37 variant, has been the carrier of COVID-19 in around 81% of infections in Peru since April. Cases have been found in 29 countries, territories or areas within five WHO regions.

However, Japanese researchers said the threat of the variant might be underestimated given that it was only identified as a “variant of concern.”

“Lambda can be a potential threat to human society,” University of Tokyo principal researcher Kei Sato said, according to Reuters.

Dr Georg-Christian Zinn, director of the Bioscientia Hygiene Center in Ingelheim, Germany, said the Japanese team’s statement should be taken seriously even though their findings have yet to be verified.

“The new Japanese preprint study on the Lambda variant is very, very believable,” he told RTL.de, according to a translation of his comments. He referred to the expertise of the researchers, adding that “the data is valid”.

Pablo Tsukayama, a doctor of molecular microbiology at Cayetano Heredia University in Lima who documented the emergence of Lambda, said that when it was discovered, “it didn’t attract much attention.”

In March 2021, it was in 50% of the samples in Lima, but only a month later, it was in 80% of the samples in Peru. “This 1-50% jump is an early indicator of a more heritable variant,” Tsukayama told Al Jazeera in July.

Meanwhile, Dr Stuart Ray, professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital, told NPR in July that Lambda is “kind of a cousin of the alpha variant,” but it is not yet clear that she is has an advantage over the highly contagious delta variant. .

“Delta is clearly dominating right now. And so I think our focus can stay on Delta as a feature of a highly infectious variant,” he said.

“We have to be vigilant for these new variants and follow them,” he said. “I think right now Lambda is a variant of interest, and we’ll see if that becomes a variant of concern.”

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