Is the new variant of the UK New Coronavirus more contagious? Is it more likely to be fatal or cause serious illness? And is it more likely to defeat the body’s immune response, including those stimulated by vaccines?
Several European countries have begun imposing travel bans on the United Kingdom because of the emergence of a more infectious and more easily controlled variant of coronavirus in the country.
As of December 19 in the UK, there were more than 2 million cases of new coronavirus infections in the UK, and the number of new coronavirus deaths has exceeded 67,000.
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British Prime Minister Johnson imposed a new level 4 of strict epidemic control measures in these areas on the 19th, cancelling plans to ease restrictions that were scheduled for the Christmas period, affecting millions of people.
Is the new variant of the UK’s new coronavirus more contagious? Is it more likely to be fatal or cause serious illness? And is it more likely to defeat the body’s immune response, including those stimulated by vaccines?
How scary is the variant virus
The BBC reports that the new variant was first identified in September of this year, and statistics from November showed that a quarter of confirmed cases in London came from the variant. By mid-December, that number was close to two-thirds.
These three events merged together, and this caused great concern.
It is rapidly replacing other versions of the new coronavirus.
Importantly, it can partially affect the neo-coronavirus mutation.
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Some mutations have been tested in the laboratory, and mutations enhance the ability of the virus to infect cells.
These factors have led to a new coronavirus variant that is more transmissible. However, we do not yet have a complete picture of this new variant of the virus. Sometimes, the virus spreads rapidly simply because of the timing or location, such as in London.
The most likely explanation for the unusually high mutability of this strain is that it appears in patients with weak immune systems that are unable to fight the virus.
There is no evidence yet that this variant of the virus is more lethal. And at least we see that the vaccines that have been developed will almost certainly work against it. But the most worrisome point is that the virus has mutated again, avoiding the antibody effect that the vaccine was hoping to produce against it, rendering the vaccine ineffective.
Propagation accelerated by 70 percent
Scientists are moving quickly to understand why a new strain of a new coronavirus that emerged in the U.K. in September appears to be spreading faster than the previous strain.
According to the Wall Street Journal, British scientists say the preliminary conclusion is that the virus has mutated, altering the stinger protein on the surface of the virus and increasing the protein’s ability to adhere to and enter human cells. Preliminary analysis suggests that these changes have allowed the virus variant, known as N501Y, to spread 70 percent faster than the previous strain.
Neville Sanjana of the New York Genome Center says there is no evidence that this virus variant has spread to the United States.
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Viruses continue to mutate, and coronaviruses mutate more slowly than some other viruses, such as influenza viruses. Sometimes these unexpected changes change the characteristics of this virus, sometimes they don’t.
Scientists have found 23 genetic changes in this new variant, a higher than usual number, and some of these changes are related to changes in the proteins made by this virus.
Pictures of the new coronavirus show that the virus has spiny protrusions on its surface, and the aforementioned spiny protein is located at the top of these protrusions, looking like a crown, from which the coronavirus gets its name. The stinging protein contains certain types of amino acids that can use the body’s Flavoprotease enzyme to break down the cell wall, allowing it to enter the body’s cells.
Can it beat the body’s immune response
The research now addresses three main questions: Is the new variant more infectious? Are they more likely to be fatal or cause serious disease? And is it more likely to defeat the body’s immune response, including those stimulated by vaccines?
The initial answers to these questions, given by British scientific advisers on Saturday, were: yes, no and no.
Valance, the British government’s chief scientific adviser, said on Saturday that three types of studies – genetic makeup, statistics and laboratory tests – have been conducted on this virus variant, and the combined results of these three studies suggest that this variant is more likely to spread from person to person than the previous strain.
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He said this variant first appeared in September, either in London or in nearby Kent, with the former found on Sept. 21 and the latter on Sept. 20. By mid-November, 28% of cases in London were associated with this new variant. By the week that began Dec. 9, that percentage had risen to 62 percent.
“This new variant is becoming the dominant strain; it is outpacing all others in terms of transmission,” Vallance said at a briefing on Saturday.
A preliminary description of the variant, published online by scientists associated with the U.K. program to track genetic variation in the new coronavirus, suggests that the new variant may have arisen in people with chronic infections, possibly because of a weakened immune system.
Vallance said the determination that this variant is less dangerous and less likely to affect the effectiveness of the new crown vaccine is only a preliminary conclusion. Theoretically, he said, this new strain could alter the immune response, although so far there is no evidence to suggest that this has occurred.
“The working hypothesis now is that the immune response stimulated by the New Crown vaccine should be sufficient to deal with this virus, but we need to be vigilant about that,” he said.
According to Sanjana of the New York Genome Center, “A single mutation does not generally change the performance of a vaccine.”
British officials said they had no evidence in hand to indicate the existence of this new variant in other countries, although scientists said an independent, similar variant has emerged in South Africa.
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