Just as the world was beginning to expect vaccines to usher in a healthier 2021, the UK on Sunday warned against a highly contagious and mutated strain of coronavirus. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has placed London and surrounding areas under the strictest blockade since March, effectively canceling Christmas. “When the virus changes its attack method, we must change our defense method,” he told a news conference on Sunday.
As Europe and the rest of the world were waking up to a new nightmare and setting travel restrictions, the scientific community was quick to comfort alarmed populations. Scientists repeatedly emphasized that all viruses mutate, it is in their nature, even the flu virus mutates, so vaccines need to be updated frequently. The coronavirus has mutated before, once at the start of the pandemic. “This thing is transmitting, acquiring, adapting all the time,” Dr. Ravindra Gupta, a virologist at the University of Cambridge, told the New York Times. “But people don’t want to hear what we say, which is: this virus will mutate.” added.
How many times has the Sars-CoV-2 virus mutated?
So far, scientists have noticed two distinct sets of mutations in the virus that cause Covid-19, the H69 / V70 deletion and D614G, both of which affect spike proteins, helping the virus to bind to the human cell. and infect it. It is this ability that vaccines seek to attack and weaken. The H69-70 deletion affects antibody susceptibility, and has been seen three times so far, in Danish mink, in Great Britain, and in a patient who responded much less to convalescent plasma therapy.
The virus was first reported in Wuhan, and since then it is said to have mutated many times, most of which have gone unnoticed. The BBC reported that if you compare the strain that is infecting people now with the first that spread in Wuhan, a total of 25 mutations will be visible, that’s a little more than two mutations per month. As the human body becomes more adept at identifying and fighting it, the virus is expected to fight back as well, trying to evade the body’s immune system.
D614G is the first known mutation suspected to have occurred in eastern China in January and then spread to New York City and Europe. Within months of the pandemic, this particular variant was found all over the world as it had successfully replaced its predecessor, which had spread from Wuhan.
Scientists have opined that the pandemic spread faster as a result of the 614G mutation, stating that some countries that were initially successful in containing the virus later faltered due to the new strain, which spread more quickly.
The H69-70 deletion occurred when the coronavirus spread from humans to mink in Denmark and then Utah. The coronavirus has a tendency to jump from humans to animals and vice versa, minks kept in crowded farms fell prey to the virus and thousands had to be killed to prevent the mutated virus from spreading to humans.
So far there is no evidence that the mutations alter the efficacy of the vaccine. When 614G spread, scientists studied its effect on human lung tissues and hamsters, and found that although it spread more rapidly, it did not alter or create new symptoms, or cause a monumental increase in deaths. What’s even more important than mutations is the change in human behavior, which scientists say affects the way the virus spreads more than mutations.
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