On December 14, 2020, a new coronavirus variant, B.1.1.7, was discovered in the United Kingdom, and on December 19, Prime Minister Johnson mentioned in a national address that the variant could be 70 percent more transmissible than the original strain.
Tyra Grove Krause, director of the Danish State Serum Institute, found in mid-January that B.1.1.7 was increasing in Denmark at a rate of 70 percent per week, despite a strict ban.
Krause described the surge in confirmed cases as going to be like a tsunami, saying, “It’s kind of like a tsunami for a while, like you’re standing on a beach and all of a sudden you see all the water retracting,” and “then the tsunami sweeps back in and is overwhelming.”
Viral mutations “unprecedented”
The B.1.1.7 variant has 23 mutated loci, 14 of which are mutations that have not been recorded in the global neo-coronavirus genetic database since the neo-coronavirus pandemic, said Andrew Lambart, a professor at the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom, in his paper “Preliminary genetic characterization of stinging protein mutations on UK neo-coronavirus variants. “This is unprecedented.”
After the first reports of the B.1.1.7 strain in the United Kingdom, European countries announced restrictions and temporary interruptions on flights from and travel to the United Kingdom, but despite this, the strain continues to make its presence felt in countries around the world and has now been identified in at least 70 countries. The British variant has also been found in Shanghai, Guangdong and Daxing, Beijing, China. The Chinese Communist Party is trying to cover up the seriousness of the mutated virus infection in Daxing, Beijing, where the Xin Yuan Xin Du neighborhood and the Xing Guang community have been sealed off for more than two weeks without giving residents a clear reason.
British Prime Minister Johnson said on January 22 that there was “some evidence” that the B.1.1.7 mutant strain was also causing increased mortality, with the original strain killing 1% of those infected over the age of 60 and the mutant strain B.1.1.7 killing about 1.3 to 1.4%. This strain also causes death cases in younger patients.
According to the Global New Crown gene sequence sharing database GISAID and GenBank, as of January 14, 2021, about 30 virus samples have been sequenced in all countries worldwide, with more than 150,000 sequenced in the United Kingdom and 72,427 sequenced in the United States. A total of only 2,071 have been sequenced in China as of Jan. 13, 2021, according to the Beijing Institute of Genome Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Experts point out that the discovery of the mutated virus in the UK does not establish that the source is in the UK. And as long as the CCP controls the numbers, it controls the outbreak.
Can a vaccine outrun a virus mutation?
Vaccines work by activating the body’s cellular and humoral immunity in two ways. FDA experts explain that humoral immunity mainly blocks the virus from entering cells through antibody-mediated blockade, while the body’s immune response relies mainly on cellular immunity, i.e., it relies on T-cell immunity to achieve clearance of the virus, and cellular immunity also has a memory immune response, which can stop the body from secondary infection.
Is the vaccine still useful after the virus mutates? According to a professor at the Institute of Virus Research at the University of Essen Medical School in Germany, the most critical factor in assessing a vaccine’s ability to resist mutated viruses is its ability to induce a T-cell immune response in humans. mRNA vaccines (in the US) and adenovirus vector vaccines (in the UK) can both induce humoral and cellular immunity, while inactivated vaccines (in China) can only induce humoral immunity.
Who runs faster, the vaccine or the virus mutation? The professor noted, “A single mutation that may not destroy the effectiveness of the vaccine, but once there are many mutations, it’s a different story.” He noted that when mutations in the virus accumulate to a certain level, the potential exists to make the vaccine ineffective.
Latest Clinical Data Suggest Decreased Immunoprotection for New Coronavirus Vaccine?
On Jan. 29, Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser for the U.S. coronavirus pandemic, acknowledged that the new crown vaccine is less effective against viral mutations. Fauci said, “The thing that worries me every night is that there is a mutation that can break free of everything that’s going on.”
The main super strains that have now emerged since the New Coronavirus became Epidemic are the D614G variant prevalent in Europe, the Danish mink variant, the British variant strain B.1.1.7, the South African variant strain 501Y.V2 (B.1.351), and the latest P.1 variant found in the Brazilian state of Amazonas. The South African variant 501Y.V2 (B.1.351) has been found in more than 30 countries and shares the same mutation site N501Y as the British variant B.1.1.7, i.e. both strains attack human cells through the N501Y site in the receptor binding region.
The latest data from Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine in the U.S. showed that the vaccine was only 57% effective in South African clinical trials; Novavax data also showed that effectiveness dropped dramatically to less than 50% in a small 4,400-person trial in South Africa; and laboratory studies at Columbia University found that the effectiveness of Moderna and Pfizer/Baintech’s vaccine against the new South African crown mutant strain was reduced by 6.5-8.6 times.
There have been cases in the U.S. of positive tests despite a 2nd dose of vaccine. Massachusetts U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch (D) tested positive for COVID-19 after receiving two doses of the Pfizer vaccine (Pfizer-BioNTech).
In issuing an emergency use authorization last month, the U.S. drug regulator said there are no data to show how long the vaccine provides protection, “nor is there evidence that the vaccine can stop human-to-human transmission of SARS-CoV-2.”
Viral mutations pose an unprecedented challenge to vaccine effectiveness. A professor, director of the Alan Diamond Research Center in New York, said, “With 100 million people worldwide already infected with a new coronavirus, there is then a theoretical chance that the virus could mutate in 100 million ways.”
Safety of domestically produced vaccine in doubt
The basic data related to the safety and efficacy of the two vaccines from the development process, clinical testing and actual vaccination by CCP’s State Drug and Kexing are very opaque. Chinese experts have made inconsistent statements about inactivated vaccines, and the actual safety of the vaccines is in doubt.
On Dec. 30 last year, Zhong Nanshan said, “It is not right to put all our hopes on the vaccine. After the vaccine, “the antibodies produced will not be infected, infected with no symptoms, no one knows. Infection without symptoms, but will not be infected with people, no one knows”. A month later, Zhong Nanshan touted the immune protection rate of the domestic vaccine at 75%. He also boasted that “the incidence of mild general adverse reactions is 6 per 100,000, and the incidence of serious adverse reactions is 1 in a million” and that it was safe.
Overseas media have revealed that 300 people in Pančevo, Serbia, 47 Chinese employees in Uganda, and 17 employees in Angola, a central enterprise expatriate, were diagnosed with the disease after receiving the vaccine. Many doctors in Beijing and Shanghai refused to give the vaccine, and Ms. Xia, a retired doctor in Beijing’s Chaoyang District, said that no doctor she knows would get the vaccine, “It’s definitely not a vaccine that can be given.
In the “Annual Work Report 2020” submitted on January 8, 2021, the Shanghai Jing’an District health Care Committee revealed that the first two doses of the vaccine were administered to a total of 12,479 people in the district, with a total of 17 cases of adverse reactions reported, including four cases of abnormal reactions and one case of coincidental illness (a coincidental onset of a disease that has not yet been detected in the vaccine recipient). 1 case. The abnormal reactions and coincidental reactions are all serious adverse reactions, and the 5 cases are more than 4 in 10,000, far exceeding the safety line of 6 in 100,000 for general adverse reactions.
Domestic vaccines are inactivated vaccines, a more traditional path of development, and compared with foreign vaccines, the neutralizing antibody titer is low and the neutralization is poor, in other words, the quality of the antibodies produced is poor and low-end, and the risk of ADE is higher in inactivated vaccines due to the poor quality of cultured antibodies, and there is no laboratory evidence and clinical evidence that inactivated vaccines do not trigger ADE effects. The domestic hepatitis B vaccine, inactivated cerebral B vaccine, and diphtheria vaccine are problematic and have repeatedly caused vaccine fiascoes in China, with countless families victimized, victims petitioning for help and often being arrested across provinces, which should be fresh in the minds of the nation.
Inactivated vaccines appear to be more “retarded” in terms of their ability to deal with mutated viruses. Experts from the University of Essen Medical School in Germany pointed out that the technical route of inactivated vaccines is cell Culture, and the process is much longer than the growth of foreign mRNA vaccines without cell environment, which takes 4-6 months at the earliest, so it is difficult to cope with the fast mutation of the virus. Moreover, new mutant strains with high growth capacity need to be screened from different patients, a process with great uncertainty.
Recent Comments