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The COVID-19 strain has nearly two dozen mutations that could affect coronavirus proteins, Patrick Vallance, the UK’s chief scientific adviser, said on Saturday. It is fast becoming the dominant variety in the capital and the southeast of the country, he said.
Scientists have identified mutations in the genome, “which are known to be related to the way the virus attaches itself to and enters cells,” Vallance told a press conference also attended by Prime Minister Boris. Johnson. These changes “raise concerns about the effects of the virus.”
Johnson said there was no evidence to suggest that the new strain was causing higher mortality or a more severe course of disease than the previous strain, nor was there any reason to believe it was affecting COVID-19 vaccines, although they are still being tested. the data.
However, it appears to be 70 percent. more contagious and can increase the R-value, the number of people infected per person, by 0.4 points, Johnson said.
Proliferation
Viruses are often genetically unstable and their constant mutations allow them to infect new organisms, as happened last year when the coronavirus likely jumped from animals to humans. Researchers have raised concerns about the acceleration of a pathogen that has already infected more than 75 million people. people around the world, the spread could allow it to change to a more deadly form.
“We must reduce the spread to avoid hospitalizations and deaths,” Jeremy Farrar, infectious disease specialist and director of Wellcome, the UK research foundation, said on Twitter. “And to reduce the possibility of the virus developing and spreading uncontrollably.”
Changes in viruses can tilt events in two different directions: They can limit spread and virulence, but they can also shift dynamics in a much more dangerous direction, he wrote.
Whether it will become more dangerous is not yet known, he added. While many aspects of the pandemic have been predictable since the beginning of the year, “we are entering a less predictable phase.”
Johnson announced a new round of restrictions on Saturday after the UK reported 27,052 new cases, totaling more than two million. On October 31, the number of cases in the country reached one million.
The prime minister introduced quarantine in London and much of the south-east of England. He withdrew plans to ease restrictions on the pandemic for five days during the holidays and banned reunions between different families in London and the southeast of the country, restricting communication with the rest of England until Christmas.
A number of countries have announced flight bans from the UK on the new COVID-19 variant.
Tissue farms
SARS-CoV-2 tends to mutate more slowly than some other viruses because it has a self-correcting mechanism that keeps its genetic sequence relatively stable. But other coronavirus strains, including strains in a population of tissues susceptible to viruses that can be highly contagious, have been detected and reported to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Millions of farm-grown tissues have been euthanized, although the WHO announced on November 20 that the most worrisome strain of animals is no longer circulating in humans.
Mutations in the virus are sometimes cause for concern. Nearly twenty years ago, scientists looked closely at mutations in a deadly strain of bird flu that killed millions of birds around the world, a strain that has been shown to be very dangerous to a small percentage of people infected with it. The avian influenza virus has finally disappeared, without reaching the stage of easy spread from person to person.
The coronavirus is already highly contagious. Without virus control measures, each infected person often infects others. Virus particles attached to droplets of human respiratory secretions or aerosol particles can easily spread.
Highly contagious
Under certain conditions, such as in meat processing plants, the virus has, as far as is known, spread between workers who are within twenty feet of each other. Another danger is the spread of the virus from asymptomatic people who don’t even know they are infected.
If mutations made the virus even deadlier, such a scenario would cause even more concern. To date, more than 1.6 million people have died from the virus worldwide. people, the elderly, and people with comorbidities are at higher risk of developing a more severe form of the disease or dying.
However, there is another concern: a mutated virus may be more resistant to the immune system’s response to the virus and render existing coronavirus vaccines useless.
“There are theoretical reasons to suspect that some changes may alter part of the immune system response, but so far there are no issues to support this assumption,” Valance said.
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