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According to data from the UK Department of Health, a recently found mutated strain of coronavirus in southern Britain is spreading much faster than the previous virus, reports dw.com. The new strain has already infected more than a thousand people.
On the other hand, as Health Secretary Matt Hancock said, that doesn’t mean the new strain is more dangerous. It’s probably due to the mutated virus that the number of infections in the country has recently increased significantly, he guessed.
By the way, the mere fact of the appearance of a new variety is nothing special. In China, for example, where the coronavirus was first detected, a new strain was identified about half a year ago. In the summer, a new variety appeared in Spain that spread to half of the European countries. Viruses are constantly mutating, but the effects of such changes are usually minimal.
How does the body react to the mutated coronavirus?
Resuscitation Department at Santara Clinics
© Vidmantas Balkūnas
Normally, the human body can defend itself against viruses by producing antibodies that help it fight the infectious agent and gain immunity. It is true that if the pathogen mutates and the antibodies in the body are “programmed” to fight the previous strain of the virus, their effectiveness is greatly reduced.
This is why we still get colds. Our body produces antibodies to kill the virus that caused the previous cold, but antibodies to the altered variant only come into play after illness. Still, don’t panic because a mutated virus doesn’t always get more dangerous. Sometimes mutations even weaken it.
How do viruses mutate?
If the human body starts to produce antibodies against a particular strain of the virus, the virus tries to change its envelope so that the next time it is not “recognized” by immune cells. To survive, the virus changes its extrinsic proteins and creates new strains.
To reproduce, the virus needs cells from the carrier organism, which it infects by inserting its own genetic information. The infected cells begin to produce millions of copies of the virus. Microscopic errors inevitably occur during this process. Each of them slightly changes the genetic code of the virus. In other words, the virus mutates.
Why is a new strain of the virus spreading so rapidly?
The SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, a respiratory infection, like all coronaviruses, belongs to a type of RNA virus. These viruses mutate about once a month.
The SARS-CoV-2 strains explain the strange fact that the coronavirus causes waves of infection of varying intensity in different parts of the world, as well as the severity of the symptoms and the course of the disease.
The coronavirus strain found in the UK was caused by a mutation in protein needles. Due to the so-called genetic deletion (the chromosome loses part of the sequence), this strain no longer has two amino acids. It is for this reason that the new version of the coronavirus is spreading so rapidly.
In the summer, a similar situation was observed in the East Asia region, but there, patients infected with a new strain of coronavirus had a much milder form. Obviously, the mutated virus then weakened.
Will the vaccine protect against the mutated coronavirus?
Vaccine for COVID-19
© Photo by Vida Press
The UK became the first Western European country to launch mass vaccination against COVID-19. Just because a new strain of coronavirus has been identified doesn’t mean that the vaccine won’t work. So far, all the COVID-19 vaccines developed encode the protein needle information in a way that stimulates the patient’s immune system even when infected with the mutated coronavirus.
Fortunately, the virus would need a series of mutations to change its proteins and avoid an immune response. We also know that influenza viruses mutate so rapidly that new vaccines are needed each year to maintain resistance.
Therefore, it can be concluded that coronavirus vaccines will likely need to be modified in the future. On the other hand, the data collected during the pandemic and the production capacity enabled will undoubtedly help to provide the population with affordable vaccines.
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