Mutations increase with cases

The race against the virus that causes COVID-19 has taken a new turn: mutations appear quickly, and the longer it takes to vaccinate people, the more likely it is that a variant that can escape tests, treatments and vaccines. current could emerge.

The coronavirus is becoming more and more genetically diverse, and health officials say the high rate of new cases is the main reason. Each new infection gives the virus a chance to mutate as it copies itself, threatening to undo the progress made so far in controlling the pandemic.

On Friday, the World Health Organization called for more effort to detect new variants. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said a new version first identified in the UK could become dominant in the US by March. While it won’t cause more serious illness, it will lead to more hospitalizations and deaths just because it spreads much more easily, the CDC said, warning of “a new phase of exponential growth.”

“We take it really, really seriously,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the US government’s top infectious disease specialist, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday.

“We need to do all we can now … to minimize transmission,” said Dr Michael Mina of Harvard University. “The best way to prevent the emergence of mutant strains is to slow down transmission.”

The vaccines so far appear to remain effective, but there are signs that some of the new mutations could interfere with tests for the virus and reduce the effectiveness of antibody drugs as treatments.

“We are in a race against time” because the virus “can run into a mutation” that makes it more dangerous, said Dr. Pardis Sabeti, an evolutionary biologist at the Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard.

Younger people may be less willing to wear masks, avoid crowds, and take other steps to avoid infection because the current strain doesn’t seem to make them very sick, but “in a mutational change it could She warned. Sabeti documented a change in the Ebola virus during the 2014 outbreak that made it worse.

UPGRADING TRANSFERS

It is normal for viruses to acquire small changes or mutations in their genetic makeup as they reproduce. Those that help the virus to flourish give it a competitive edge and thus crowd out other versions.

In March, just months after the discovery of the coronavirus in China, a mutation called D614G emerged, which made it more likely to spread. It quickly became the dominant version in the world.

Now, after months of relative calm, “we have started to see a striking evolution” of the virus, wrote biologist Trevor Bedford of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle on Twitter last week. “The fact that we’ve seen three variants of concern emerge since September suggests there will likely be more to come.”

One was first identified in the UK and quickly became dominant in parts of England. It has now been reported in at least 30 countries, including the United States.

Shortly after, South Africa and Brazil reported new variants, and the main mutation of the version identified in Britain came to light on a different version “circulating in Ohio … in less since September, ”said Dr. Dan Jones, an Ohio State University molecular pathologist who announced the discovery last week.

“The important conclusion here is that it’s unlikely to be travel-related,” and that it may instead reflect the virus acquiring similar mutations independently as more infections occur, Jones said.

It also suggests that the travel restrictions might be ineffective, Mina said. Because the United States has so many cases, “we can produce our own variations that are just as bad or worse” than other countries, he said.

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TREATMENT, VACCINE, RISK OF REINFECTION

Some lab tests suggest that the variants identified in South Africa and Brazil may be less sensitive to antibody drugs or convalescent plasma, antibody-rich blood from COVID-19 survivors – which help people fight off the virus.

Government scientists “are actively studying” this possibility, Dr. Janet Woodcock of the US Food and Drug Administration told reporters on Thursday. The government is encouraging the development of multi-antibody treatments rather than single-antibody drugs to have more means of targeting the virus in case one of them proves ineffective, she said.

Current vaccines induce immune responses broad enough to remain effective, say many scientists. Sufficient genetic change may eventually require fine-tuning the vaccine formula, but “it will probably take years if we use the vaccine well rather than months,” Dr. Andrew Pavia of the University of Utah said Thursday at a conference. ‘a webcast hosted by the American Society for Infectious Diseases.

Health officials are also concerned that if the virus changes enough, people could contract COVID-19 a second time. Reinfection is currently rare, but Brazil has already confirmed a case in a person with a new variant who had been sickened by a previous version several months earlier.

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WHAT TO DO

“We see a lot of variants, of viral diversity, because there are a lot of viruses there,” and reducing new infections is the best way to stop them, said Dr Adam Lauring, an infectious disease expert at the ‘University of Michigan. in Ann Arbor.

Loyce Pace, who heads the nonprofit World Health Council and is a member of President-elect Joe Biden’s COVID-19 advisory committee, said the same precautions scientists advised from the start “still work and still matter.” .

“We always want people to hide,” she said Thursday during a webcast hosted by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

“We still need people to limit gatherings with people outside their homes. We still need people to wash their hands and be really vigilant about these public health practices, especially as these variants emerge.

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AP medical editor Carla K. Johnson in Seattle contributed reporting.

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