- Coronavirus spread appears to be out of control in certain regions, including several states in the US, Brazil, India, and other areas.
- The last 1 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 were diagnosed within just eight days, compared to more than three months for the first million.
- One reason why coronavirus transmission is increasing in various communities may have to do with a small mutation that makes the virus even more contagious than before.
It took just eight days for the new coronavirus to infect the last million people, compared to more than three months for the first million registered cases. As of Tuesday morning, more than 10.43 million COVID-19 infections have been confirmed, and the disease has killed more than 510,000 patients so far. While some countries were able to flatten their infection curves and return to a certain sense of normality, others still do not contain the first wave. The United States, Brazil and India continue to report tens of thousands of new infections per day, and the world hit a daily record on Sunday when 183,000 cases were recorded worldwide, according to new statistics from the World Health Organization (WHO).
The tests have increased dramatically compared to the first months of the pandemic, there is no doubt about it. But the SARS-CoV-2 virus is highly infectious, especially in densely populated communities where people do not practice social distancing and refuse to wear masks. Now, it turns out that the reason why the spread of the coronavirus is out of control in regions that don’t respect any safety measure could be a small mutation that may have made the virus more contagious.
This is not the first time we have heard about the D614G mutation, which has been detailed in several COVID-19 studies in recent months. But more researchers believe that this mutation is primarily responsible for the emergence of a dominant version of SARS-CoV-2 that is more infectious than the original virus that emerged from Wuhan late last year.
How The Washington Post explains, about 1,300 amino acids are part of the proteins on the surface of the virus. One of these mutated amino acids, number 614, changed from “D” (aspartic acid) to “G” (glycine). This change alone, also known as the “G” mutation, could have made the virus more efficient in connecting to ACE2 receptors and binding to cells in the human body.
The mutation affected the spike proteins, which are found on the outside of the virus. These protruding structures are what allow the pathogen to bind to healthy cells. Once this is done, the RNA information in the virus is decoded and the cells are hijacked to produce large quantities of the virus. The replicas are released from the dying cells and the process is repeated over and over again.
Of the nearly 50,000 virus genomes that were uploaded online, about 70% of them carry the G mutation, the Send reports. Four new studies indicate that the variation makes the virus more infectious, but the work has not been peer-reviewed. A different study says that patients infected with the G mutation have more viruses in their bodies, making them more likely to pass it on to others. If the G mutation gives the virus a better chance of connecting to cells, then the virus could multiply more easily than version D.
The good news is that the G mutation does not make people sicker or more deadly. Furthermore, the mutation has not hindered the work of the vaccine so far. It could make the virus more contagious.
“The epidemiological study and our data together really explain why [G variant’s] the spread in Europe and the United States was really fast, “said Scripps Research virologist Hyeryun Choe.” This is not accidental. “
The researcher explained that the original SARS-CoV-2 peak protein had two parts that did not always hold well together. The outer part was frequently broken in the original, meaning the virus had a harder time infecting cells. Choe found that the G version of the virus had more spike proteins, and that the outer parts were less likely to break. This change was enough to make the study 10 times more infectious in laboratory experiments.
A geneticist at the New York Genome Center and New York University was studying the genes that allow the virus to infiltrate human cells. But Neville Sanjana’s experiments failed to use a gene sequence from a Wuhan patient. The switch to the G mutation increased the virus’s ability to infect cells. “We were surprised,” said Sanjana. The team repeated the experiment on various cell types, and each time the G mutation was many times more infectious.
While Choe thinks the spike protein is more stable due to the G mutation, Sanjana’s team believes that the mutation helps with the actual process of invading the human cell. Jeremy Luban of the University of Massachusetts School of Medicine has a third hypothesis. Variation G allows the spike protein to change shape as it binds to the ACE2 receptor, and that is what allows it to better fuse with the cell’s membrane.
The D614G mutation was previously theorized to be responsible for the increased infectivity of the virus, as the researchers published such studies in April. But others disputed the findings, saying there may have been problems with the data collected. Reduced access to testing in the United States, as well as the fact that the G mutation came to the United States from Europe, could have affected the April investigation.
The increased number of studies on the D614G mutation could provide the answers officials and doctors need to continue fighting the pandemic. If this small mutation is responsible for the increased spread of the virus, the outbreaks could be even more difficult to control. Social distancing, face masks, and regular hand washing could still help reduce the risk of transmission and save more time until more medications are available.
Chris Smith started writing about gadgets as a hobby, and before he knew it, he was sharing his views on technology topics with readers around the world. Every time he doesn’t write about gadgets, he unfortunately doesn’t stay away from them, even though he tries desperately. But that is not necessarily a bad thing.
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