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Marcelo Navarrete, coordinator of the Laboratory of the Teaching Research Center of the University of Magallanes, commented on Cooperative the discovery of a new strain of Covid-19 in the Region, which is currently experiencing a complex health situation.
According to the latest ICovid report, Magellan has shown a disease burden of 102 new daily cases on a weekly average per 100,000 inhabitants, with a positivity rate around 30 percent average in the last week.
In conversation with A new morning, the expert explained that “the variants of the viruses that were present in the first wave tended to disappear towards May or June, and this second wave is characterized by a variant of the virus that is different from the one that dominated the first wave“.
“The other peculiarity is that it is present with very low frequency on the planet and yet for some reason in Magallanes it is enriched“Navarrete warned.
“We do not know if it facilitates something”
“What characterizes this variant is that has a mutation in the adhesion protein, which causes a change in the structure of the protein that the virus uses to stick to human cells. The mutations you have cause changes in amino acids and structure“he explained.
The scientist stated that “It is still too early to say if this has a functional implication: we do not know if the adherence property changes, if it facilitates something in the virus. For now it is a phenomenon that we are observing“.
Despite this, Navarrete clarified that “there is a theoretical possibility that a virus that has proteins with different amino acids on the surface (like this new strain), can escape the immune response… That’s, at least, a theoretical possibility“.
