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A new mutated variant of the coronavirus has been discovered in Norway, Denmark, the United Kingdom and the United States. According to the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH), it can be more contagious.
A new, potentially more contagious variant has also been discovered in Finland. Before that, other varieties have been found in the UK and South Africa, as well as Brazil.
Strange? Not at all. Like all other viruses, the coronavirus is constantly changing and the more we look, the more variants we will find. Are the new variants more contagious? Maybe, maybe not. Should we be worried? Quite the contrary.
In any case, that’s the opinion of Tomas Bergström, professor of clinical microbiology at the University of Gothenburg.
– We will see new variants all the time. Because that’s what all viruses do, changes. I would have been more concerned if there was a single variant taking over the entire land. Then I would suspect that he had found a special niche that makes him stable, he tells TT.
“Divinations”
The claims that are made and so far have been made about the possible contagion of these variants, for example by the Norwegian FHI, it calls “conjecture”.
– It is difficult to know if one variant of the virus is more contagious than another. So far I’ve only seen one study (on the coronavirus) that did it and it was on the European variant that came here from China, says Bergström.
TT: But you see how the so-called British variant is taking over, right?
– Yes, but that doesn’t have to mean it’s more contagious. There is something in biology called the “founder effect” which basically means that what gets to a place first spreads. During a conference in the US, 120 people were infected with the coronavirus, resulting in 300,000 infected. If it was of a certain variant, that variant had a great diffusion. So what spreads can easily be due to chance, says Tomas Bergström.
Plus, he says, it doesn’t matter much if one variant is a bit more contagious than another. Anyway, the measures we have to fight the virus are the same.
– It may definitely be the case that some variants are more contagious than others, but it will be a bit of a battle for the Pope’s beard. The biggest optimization went through this virus even before it started to spread across the land.
The vaccine is crucial
However, the sequencing of the coronavirus is absolutely crucial so that we can find variants in which the vaccine does not bite.
– If we spread the infection between vaccinated people, it means that we have a variant that has managed to mutate outside the clutches of the vaccine and then we must act to update the vaccine. That’s why we have this sequence in place, not to find new variants, says Bergström.
The massive hype surrounding the various variants, he says, is likely due to the fact that we can now, for the first time, follow the development of a virus more or less in real time, something that had not been possible before.
– It is as if we have opened the door to a completely new landscape where we can suddenly see how a virus changes, in a way that we had not been able to before, says Bergström.
Johan Nilsson / TT
The three variants that are now in focus are B.1.1.7 (first discovered in the UK), B.1.351 (first discovered in South Africa) and finally P.1 (first discovered in Brazil).
Each of these variants carries a number of different mutations. Some mutations occur in several variants, such as E484K, which is a mutation that helps the virus escape the immune system and is found in both B.1.351 (South Africa) and P.1 (Brazil).
In addition, a variant has been recorded in Norway and Denmark that is designated B.1.525 and has similarities to the South African and British variants. Another variant has been discovered in Finland, the Fin-796.
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