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A passenger is viewing information about flights at Schiphol Airport near Amsterdam, after the Netherlands announced to stop flights from the UK on December 20, 2020 – Photo: AP
A day after the UK announced its blockade of the capital London and most of the southeast region due to a new strain of the corona virus on December 19, many European countries stopped bringing in tourists from the UK over concerns. increase.
Officials from the UK and South Africa said new strains of the corona virus emerging in the country had a much higher level of infection than previous strains. Prime Minister Boris Johnson even confirmed that the UK variant of the corona virus is 70% more infectious than previous strains of the virus.
The truth is that you have up to a thousand guns pointing at the virus
Virologist Kartik Chandran compared the case of people who were vaccinated or had antibodies after infection.
No surprises
In fact, despite concerns about new virus variants, this is not surprising to scientists. British officials also say that the variant of the virus they discovered has also been found in several other countries.
During the spread of the global epidemic, researchers recorded thousands of alterations in the genetic material of SARS-CoV-2, the COVID-19 pandemic virus.
Some variants of the virus became more popular than others in the community simply because they were … “lucky” rather than because there were changes that made it stronger or more dangerous.
However, since the public immunity rate has increased and the COVID-19 vaccine is being rolled out to more people, scientists believe that the corona virus will also have more variants to hide or hide. resistance to immune responses.
“It’s a real warning that we need to pay more attention,” said Jesse Bloom, an evolutionary biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington. perspective with the New York Times newspaper.
“Certainly these variants will spread and the scientific community must follow them to determine which ones are really influencing,” he continued.
The new strain of virus found in the UK has around 20 mutations, many of which affect the way the virus invades human cells and spreads disease. These mutations may also allow the new virus variant to replicate and transmit the disease more easily, according to analysis by infection expert Muge Cevik of the University of Saint Petersburg. Andrews is in Scotland, scientific advisor to the British government.
However, Ms Muge Cevik noted that the fact that British officials estimate the infectious potential of the new variant up to 70% higher than the old strains is based on research models rather than experimental results.
“Overall, I think we need a little more experimental data; we can’t completely rule out the fact that some of the infection data could be related to human behavior.” “.
In fact, South African scientists have also noted that human behavior was the cause of the rise in the pandemic, not necessarily new viral mutations.
Is there resistance to vaccines?
The UK administration’s announcement of the new SARS-CoV-2 variant raised some concerns from the public about the risk of vaccine resistance. However, many experts urge the community to be calm and cautious, as it has been years, not months, for the virus to evolve to the point of neutralizing Pfizer / BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccines recently. was put into use.
“Don’t worry about having such a catastrophic variance that it suddenly crushes all of the virus’ immunity and antibodies,” said Dr. Jesse Bloom. “It is going to be a process that will last several years and requires the accumulation of many genetic mutations in the virus. It is not like turning the switch on / off,” he added.
Many recent studies have also shown that the corona virus can evolve to avoid detection by antibodies, but fortunately so far the entire human immune system remains a stronger shield and can overcome SARS-CoV-2.
“Regardless of how the virus twists or twists, it is not easy to find a genetic mutation that can counteract all these different antibody traits, much less the other branches of the response. Immunity in the body” – said virologist Kartik Chandran of Albert Einstein School of Medicine in New York (USA).
Therefore, it can be said briefly that regardless of the fact that the virus may have many different variants, it is still very difficult to escape the protective barrier of the human body.
My neighbors worry
Clearly, the scientific foundations are still not reassuring Britain’s neighbors. Concerned about the risk of outbreaks of new outbreaks of “super infectious” variants, the Netherlands was the first country to announce that it would stop flights from the UK from December 20 to January 1. Some other European countries also announced or considered adjusting their travel policy with the UK during this period, such as Italy, Germany, Belgium, France, Austria, Ireland.
