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London, December 19, 2020 – At the new variant of Coronavirus, identified in Britain and which prompted Prime Minister Johnson to ‘cancel’ Christmas in London (where Covid is the dominant variant), is known to spread more rapidly, but remains to be clarified if it is more lethal and if above all it can have effects negative on the efficacy of vaccines. The first to officially report on the new strain was the British Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, talking about it last Monday in the House of Commons.
Today Chris whittyThe country’s chief medical officer, in an official statement announced that “as announced last Monday, the UK has identified a new variant of Covid-19, through genomic surveillance by Public Health England. The strain may circulate faster, given the rapid spread of the variant, data emerging from preliminary models, and rapidly increasing incidence rates in the Southeast. ” Whitty has alerted the World Health Organization, while British specialists continue to analyze the available data. The impact of this variant is the point: “there is no evidence that suggest that the new strain causes a higher mortality rate or that it affects vaccines and treatments “, said the expert” although urgent work is being done to confirm this. ”
Even second Giuseppe Ippolito, The scientific director of the Hospital for Infectious Diseases of Spallanzani, WHO is thinking about the data, but at the moment there is no evidence that the new strain acts on the efficacy of vaccines. However, we need to increase research to understand it ”, he concluded.
According to the British Government Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance Viruses are constantly changing: “There are many mutations in the world. This is a particular constellation of changes that we consider important.” And not just in the UK, he explained: “We think it could be present in other countries, but there is a concentration here. It could have originated here, we don’t know for sure.”
But there is the risk of vaccines
Also for Giovanni maga, director of the Molecular Genetics Institute of the National Research Council (Cnr-Igm): “There is nothing surprising in having found a variant of the Sars-CoV-2 virus and there is no evidence that it is more bad and dangerous. But there is a risk for vaccines, As the expert explained: “In reality, geneticists who regularly observe the genetic sequences of the coronavirus strains that circulate in the world, find new mutations every day. The reason this variant has been the subject of attention is because some of the modifications to its genetic instructions worries the region that serves to express the protein ‘spike’ that, in addition to allowing the virus to enter cells, it is also the main component of vaccines ”.
However, Maga points out, “there are no published data yet and therefore it is almost impossible to make precise assessments. But from what appears it does not seem that this variant is more dangerous than the others and it is not certain that these are. mutations we really have the advantage of making it spread faster. “And he concluded:” Of course we will have to wait for the results of scientific tests, but we know that vaccines contain all peak protein, that when it enters our body it shatters and that each of them can work to induce antibodies. Thus, It is very difficult that modifications in just a portion of the protein can cause complete resistance to vaccines. ”
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