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The new mutation in the coronavirus reported by the United Kingdom appears to stimulate its faster spread. What can you expect from this new option? It’s dangerous?
A coronavirus mutation recorded in southern Britain is spreading faster than previous versions of COVID-19, said British Health Minister Matt Hancock. So far, there are 1,000 cases of people infected with the new variant of the virus.
However, this doesn’t mean it’s necessarily more dangerous, Hancock said. It can only be assumed that the current growth of new infections in the country is related to the new option.
Detection of the mutation is not uncommon. In China, for example, the country of origin of the pandemic, half a year ago a new variant of the virus was circulating. In summer, another option quickly spread from Spain to all of Europe. Viruses constantly mutate and, in most cases, the mutation has little or no effect.
How does the body react to mutations?
Usually the human body can only deal with viruses. It produces antibodies that protect it from virus attacks, creating immunity. However, when pathogens mutate and antibodies are programmed to an older version of the virus, they are already much less effective.
For this reason, for example, we regularly catch colds. In the previous cold, our body has produced the right antibodies, but not the ones that help against the mutated virus.
However, there is no reason to panic, because not all mutations make the virus more dangerous. There are also changes that can even weaken it significantly.
How do mutations occur?
When the human body produces antibodies against a virus, the new variant of the virus is forced to change its shell so that the antibodies do not recognize it. To survive, the virus must change its foreign proteins and develop new strains.
To multiply, viruses use a call. a host cell into which they enter and to which they transmit their genome. Therefore, the cells of the body produce millions of copies of the virus. But with each of these reproductions, small errors occur in the reproduction of the information, and these errors change the genetic code of the virus: it mutates.
The SARS-CoV-2 virus, like all coronaviruses, is an RNA virus that mutates almost once a month. These different variants also explain why in certain parts of the world the virus causes infections of different severity and why the infection is transmitted differently in different people.
Do vaccines become useless?
Britain became the first Western European country to launch a large-scale immunization campaign. But the new mutation doesn’t make the newly created vaccines pointless. All these drugs are designed to encode the information of the coronavirus so that, despite the mutation, they stimulate our immune system.
Fortunately, it takes more than a few mutations for the virus to change its proteins so that they can bypass our immune defenses. At the same time, however, we know that influenza viruses, for example, mutate very rapidly, and vaccines must be adapted each season to remain effective.
Therefore, coronavirus vaccines may also need to be adapted in the future. But the information gathered during the crisis and the newly created production capacities will ensure the rapid supply of cheap vaccines in the future.
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