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The Covid vaccination program should be stepped up and people instructed to take extra precautions to help contain the new variant of the coronavirus that is spreading rapidly in southern England, said a leading scientist.
Urgent studies are underway at Porton Down and other specialty labs to determine whether the new strain, revealed by Matt Hancock on Monday, spreads more easily or partially bypasses the immune system, with preliminary research suggesting there is reason for concern.
While there is no evidence that it causes a more serious disease, or that the first generation of Covid vaccines do not protect against it, the variant can spread faster, making it more difficult to contain, particularly in the midst of relaxed ones. Christmas rules.
“The way to stop this is to stop it from mutating. The more it transmits, the more potential it has to gain other skills, so the more sensible thing to do is increase vaccination and shut down, “said Ravi Gupta, a professor of clinical microbiology at the University of Cambridge, who helped identify the strain.
Gupta said there may be a case for targeting immediate vaccines in the Southeast and other areas where the multi-mutant variant has taken off. “One thing that should be modeled or discussed is whether we should vaccinate the southeast, even though the mutant has spread further,” he said. More than 1,000 cases have been identified in 60 local authority areas, predominantly in the south.
The new variant has seven mutations in the spike protein that attaches to the surface of the virus. The spike protein is the key the virus uses to unlock and infect human cells. It is also the target of many antibodies. Mutations in the spike protein often have little impact, but can potentially change the infectivity of the virus or make it less susceptible to antibodies released by the immune system.
A key mutation in the new strain, known as delta 69/70, has appeared in thousands of coronavirus samples around the world. Scientists are investigating whether the mutation helps the virus, perhaps by evading antibodies or increasing its ability to infect human cells. Preliminary tests in Gupta’s lab suggest that the mutation could increase the infectivity of the virus, but more extensive work is needed to confirm the finding.
One reason delta 69/70 is causing concern is that other versions of the coronavirus already in circulation appear to spread faster when they acquire the mutation.
Since March, versions of Covid-19 that carried a mutation called N439K rose fairly steadily, but soared in August when they also developed the delta 69/70 mutation, according to Gupta’s research, which has yet to be peer-reviewed. . Another coronavirus lineage containing a mutation called N501Y took off in September when it acquired the delta 69/70 mutation. The multi-mutant variant that spans southern England is a subgroup of the latter lineage.
In a striking example of the virus’s ability to evolve, the same delta 69/70 mutation appeared suddenly in coronavirus samples collected from a Cambridge patient with a weakened immune system. The patient was being treated with convalescent plasma – antibody-rich blood plasma from patients recovered from Covid.
During treatment, which lasted for several months, the virus developed the delta 69/70 mutation and became partially resistant to antibodies in plasma. The patient did not survive the infection.
Geneticists at the Covid-19 Genomics UK consortium, Cog-UK, routinely sequence the genetic code of coronavirus samples obtained from positive test swabs, allowing them to track variants across the country.
While mutations are a concern, Gupta believes that the vaccines that are being implemented will still protect against the variant. Vaccines stimulate the body to produce a wide range of different antibodies that attack the virus from different angles, and mutations are unlikely to confer complete resistance to all of them.
“I don’t think the vaccine is compromised, but that situation can change depending on what we do,” he said.
