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The well-known COVID-19 (Chinese Communist Party Virus) is a respiratory infection, the virus that causes it is called SARS-CoV-2. Jean-Paul Soucy, a PhD student at the University of Toronto Dalarana School of Public Health, explained to CTV News that the term “strain” refers to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, not to the COVID virus-induced disease. -19 of.
Sos said in a telephone interview on Sunday that by classifying known viruses, the virus has developed a “specific set of mutations,” causing the mutant strain to behave differently from the original strain.
According to the Globe and Mail, people who want to learn about the virus that causes Chinese communist pneumonia (COVID-19) need only visit the NextStrain.org website, which is maintained by a group of computational biologists. The website currently shows more than 3500 genes in the different branches of SARS-CoV-2 in the above means that there are more than 3500 variants of the COVID-19 virus, and these are just a few of all the variants that have been discovered. This year, the virus has gained a great chance of mutation by infecting about 80 million people, so more types of viruses have emerged.
Infectious disease expert Dr. Lisa Barrett told CTV News on Sunday that viruses generally mutate, but some viruses change more than others. He noted that although the genetic code of the coronavirus tends to change over time, mutations do not usually attract people’s attention.
He said health officials do not have to record all variants that cause COVID-19, but they need to study which variants can change who is infected with the virus, the symptoms, and how they respond to the vaccine.
Variant viruses change the way disease spreads
Generally, small differences between variant viruses result in the same infection and transmission behavior. They are like fingerprints, their genetic code can be used to identify and trace the history of various virus outbreaks, but the diseases they cause are the same.
This is not the case with the new variants that were originally discovered in the UK and are now found in Canada. Based on epidemiology and preliminary laboratory reports, the virus variant can change the characteristics of COVID-19, which is enough to change the way the disease spreads and the infected people.
Not only does this have the potential to cause a new pandemic, but constant changes in the virus can lead to changes in COVID-19 testing standards and make it more difficult for vaccine development and approval.
It is also worth noting that two other variants have recently emerged, one from South Africa and one from Nigeria. Both are not closely related to the mutations that occurred in the UK, but both have the same mutations in the viral genome. This mutation affects the way the virus invades human cells. This mutation called N501Y has appeared before, but the mutation that now appears in the UK and South Africa seems to be linked to other changes to enhance its effect.
“When you start to see an increase in the frequency of the parallel evolution of certain mutations, it shows that they have a real biological advantage,” said Jeffrey Joy, research scientist in evolutionary genetics at the AIDS Center of Excellence in British Columbia.
The British “new strain” called “B.1.1.7” sounded the alarm last weekend. According to British researchers, the transmission capacity of B.1.1.7 has increased by more than 70%. It is comparable to the cases in the south-east of England. The increase is related. When the “new strain” spreads to the surrounding uninfected people, it is easy for it to spread widely. This phenomenon is called the “founder effect.”
This may be because the “new strain” carries a large number of mutations, a total of 23 mutations. Seventeen of them caused physical changes in the viral proteins. Generally, the SARS-CoV-2 virus accumulates one or two genetic mutations each month. This indicates that the rate of molecular evolution in B.1.1.7 is higher. Marceline Côté, a molecular virologist at the University of Ottawa, said: “It has a lot of tricks that we didn’t expect.”
Epidemiological data in the UK also indicate that “new strains” may infect children more. This would be consistent with the evidence that it is easier to bind to human cell receptors.
Does the new strain invalidate existing vaccines?
The question facing scientists now is whether the “new strain” will change the “spike protein” enough to invalidate the first round of the COVID-19 vaccine. Although this question needs to be tested, Court noted that the vaccine stimulates a response to multiple sites on the spike protein, not just one site. Fortunately, the vaccine can still block the virus and prevent cell infection.
Moderna, which was approved by Health Canada on Wednesday, said in a statement that it believes this change will not affect its vaccine’s immune response. The company added: “We will conduct further testing of the vaccine in the coming weeks for confirmation.”
Barrett said current data indicates that the COVID-19 vaccine will “possibly” fight this new variant, but more research is needed.
Before learning more about variant B.1.1.7, Barrett said current public health measures should be maintained, including physical distancing, wearing masks and frequent hand washing to help limit its spread.
Editor in charge: Yan Feng # ◇
