[ad_1]
The most contagious strain of the 2019 coronavirus disease (Covid-19) had not reached the country until now, a health expert said Thursday.
“According to our findings, the other variant detected in England is not here yet,” Dr. Jaime Montoya, executive director of the Philippine Council for Health Research and Development in the Department of Science and Technology, told a news conference.
He added that the new variant arose because coronavirus 2, severe acute respiratory syndrome, the virus that causes Covid-19, was always mutating.
“That is to be expected,” he said. “The question is whether there are large or small changes in the behavior of the virus, whether it becomes more deadly or causes complications.”
Montoya noted that the new variant was found to be more contagious.
Health officials in the UK, where the variant was first detected, announced that it could be 70 percent more communicable, but that it was not yet final.
This is not the first time the coronavirus has mutated, Montoya said.
Covid-19, which was first detected in Wuhan, China, is not the dominant type that is spreading around the world.
The D614G mutation emerged in Europe last February and became the globally dominant form of the virus. Montoya said that this mutation was detected in the country by the Philippine Genome Center. Another mutation called A222V has also spread across Europe and was traced to be from Spain.
Several countries, including the Philippines, have denied entry to travelers from the UK.
The Philippines travel ban began on December 24 and will last until December 31.
Meanwhile, two new studies provide encouraging evidence that having Covid-19 may offer some protection against future infections.
The researchers found that people who produced antibodies to the coronavirus were much less likely to test positive again for up to six months and maybe longer.
The results bode well for vaccines, which trigger the immune system to produce antibodies, substances that stick to a virus and help eliminate it.
The researchers found that people with antibodies to natural infections had “a much lower risk … of the same kind of protection you would get from an effective vaccine,” of contracting the virus again, said Dr. Ned Sharpless, director of the Institute. National Cancer Institute
“It’s very, very rare” to become infected again, he added.
The institute’s study had nothing to do with cancer – many federal researchers have turned to work on the coronavirus because of the pandemic.
Both studies used two types of tests. One is a blood test for antibodies, which can last for many months after infection. The other type of test uses nasal or other swabs to detect the virus itself or parts of it, suggesting a current or recent infection.
A study, published Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine, involved more than 12,500 healthcare workers at Oxford University hospitals in the UK. Among the 1,265 who had early coronavirus antibodies, only two tested positive for active infection in the next six months, and none developed symptoms.
That contrasts with the 11,364 workers who initially did not have antibodies; 223 of them tested positive for infection within approximately six months.
The National Cancer Institute study involved more than 3 million people who underwent antibody tests from two private laboratories in the U.S. Only 0.3 percent of those who initially had antibodies subsequently tested positive for the coronavirus. , compared to 3 percent of those who lacked such antibodies.
“It’s very gratifying” to see that the Oxford researchers saw the same risk reduction: 10 times less likely to have a second infection if the antibodies were present, Sharpless said.
His institute’s report was published on a website scientists use to share research and is under review in a major medical journal.
The findings “aren’t a surprise … but it’s really reassuring because it tells people that immunity to the virus is common,” said Joshua Wolf, an infectious disease specialist at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, who doesn’t participated in none of the studies.
The antibodies themselves may not provide the protection – they could just be a sign that other parts of the immune system, such as T cells, can fight any new exposure to the virus, he said.
“We don’t know how long this immunity is,” Wolf added. Cases of people contracting Covid-19 more than once have been confirmed, so “people still need to protect themselves and others by avoiding reinfection.”
WITH THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
[ad_2]
