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At the moment there is no evidence that this new variant of SARS-CoV-2 is more aggressive in terms of disease, but the European Center for Disease Control notes that the majority of cases were detected in people under 60 years of age, with less disease. serious, but role in transmission. On the other hand, there are still no known results that show whether this variant responds differently to anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies: the fact that it has mutations in the protein spike, the piece that allows the virus to bind. to cells, leaves reinfections or affect the effectiveness of vaccines. In this sense, the ECDC recommends that all cases of reinfection and vaccine failure undergo genetic sequencing.
This turns out to be a common denominator in the recommendation of the European body, which reveals that of the more than 1,000 cases of this variant detected in the United Kingdom, the first dates back to September. The ECDC points out that few cases were detected outside of England, until yesterday only in the Netherlands, Denmark and Belgium, but European countries do genetic sequencing of far fewer viruses than the United Kingdom, without thus ruling out that this new SARS- Cov-2 may already be circulating in other countries.
In the UK, 5% to 10% of COVID-19 cases have undergone genetic sequencing to understand the virus variant involved in the infection. Since the beginning of the epidemic, more than 10,000 variants have been detected worldwide. This caught the attention of the English authorities because of the type of mutations and the rapid growth of the epidemic in southern England. In recent weeks, British authorities have estimated that an additional 50% of infections have been linked to this new variant.
In Portugal, as in other countries, the capacity for virus genomic analysis has been lower. João Paulo Gomes, head of the unit that studies the genetic diversity of viruses and bacteria at the National Institute of Health Dr. Ricardo Jorge, told me last week that the analysis of 400 SARS-CoV-2 that infected Portuguese in this second wave of the epidemic. In the approximately 1700 viruses analyzed up to August, referring to the first wave and the summer period, this variant was not detected. Yesterday, the Ministry of Health reported in the evening that it did not confirm the new variant in the sample that already includes the month of November and the second wave.
Even with little data and answers, the ECDC yesterday made public some suspicions of how the new variant appeared, which is surprising because it has several mutations and has not been detected in Spanish surveillance throughout this evolutionary process. Therefore, it is unlikely that it appeared gradually, the organism considers. One possible explanation is that the virus evolved in a single patient with a long-term infection, which gave the virus time to acquire mutations. Another possibility is that it was an evolution in animal hosts, later being transmitted to humans, basically as happened with the variant detected in the mink in Denmark. In that case, millions of animals were eventually euthanized and few human transmissions were reported, limited to the agricultural workers who raise these animals.
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