The race against the virus that causes COVID-19 has taken a new turn: mutations are rapidly emerging, and the longer it takes to vaccinate humans, the greater the chance that a variant can occur that current tests, treatments and vaccines may elude.
The coronavirus is becoming more genetically diverse, and health officials believe the high percentage of new cases is the main reason. Each new infection gives the virus a chance to mutate as it makes copies of itself and threatens to undo the progress made so far in controlling the pandemic.
The World Health Organization on Friday called for more efforts to detect new variants. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said a new version, first identified in the UK, may be available in the US by March. Although it does not cause serious illness, it will lead to more hospitalizations and deaths just because it spreads much more easily, the CDC said, warning of “a new phase of exponential growth”.
“We take it really, very seriously,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government’s leading expert in infectious diseases, said on Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“We have to do everything we can now … to get the transfer as low as possible,” said Dr. Michael Mina, Harvard University, said. “The best way to prevent mutant strains from popping up is to delay transmission.”
So far, vaccines appear to remain effective, but there are signs that some of the new mutations could undermine the tests for the virus and reduce the effectiveness of antibody products as treatments.
“We are in a race against time” because the virus ‘could stumble upon a mutation’ that makes it more dangerous, says Dr. Pardis Sabeti, an evolutionary biologist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
Younger people may be less willing to wear masks, avoid crowds and take other steps to prevent infection, as the current stress does not seem to make them very ill, but ‘in a mutation change it may be,’ she said. warned. Sabeti documented a change in the Ebola virus during the 2014 outbreak that made it much worse.
MUTATIONS ON THE RISE
It is normal for viruses to make small changes or mutations in their genetic alphabet as they reproduce. Those that help the virus thrive offer a competitive advantage and displace other versions.
In March, a few months after the coronavirus was discovered in China, a mutation called D614G emerged making it more likely to spread. It soon became the dominant version in the world.
Now, after months of relative calm, “we have begun to see a striking evolution” of the virus, biologist Trevor Bedford of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle wrote on Twitter last week. “The fact that we have been experiencing three variants of concern since September suggests that there are likely to be more.”
One was first identified in the UK and quickly became parts of England. It has now been reported in at least 30 countries, including the United States.
Shortly afterwards, South Africa and Brazil reported new variants, and the major mutation in the version identified in Britain appeared on another version “distributed in Ohio … at least as far back as September, “the dr. Dan Jones said. , a molecular pathologist at Ohio State University, who announced the finding last week.
“The most important finding here is that it is probably not travel-related” and that it may rather reflect the virus that has contracted similar mutations as more infections occur, Jones said.
It also suggests that travel restrictions may be ineffective, Mina said. Because the United States has so many cases, ‘we can breed our own varieties that are just as bad or worse’ than in other countries, he said.
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TREATMENT, VACCINATION, REINFECTION RISKS
Some laboratory tests suggest that the variants identified in South Africa and Brazil are less susceptible to antibodies or restorative plasma, antibody-rich blood of COVID-19 survivors – both of which help people fight the virus.
Janet Woodcock of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration told reporters Thursday. The government encourages the development of multi-antibody treatments rather than single-antibody drugs to have more ways to target the virus, should it be ineffective.
Current vaccines are causing immune responses broadly enough to remain effective, many scientists say. Enough genetic changes may eventually require adjusting the vaccine formula, but “it will probably take years if we use the vaccine well rather than months,” Dr. Andrew Pavia of the University of Utah said Thursday in a webcast that presented by the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
Health officials are also concerned that people may get COVID-19 a second time if the virus changes enough. Re-infection is currently rare, but Brazil has already confirmed a case in someone with a new variant who was ill with a previous version a few months earlier.
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WHAT TO DO
“We see a lot of variants, viral diversity, because there are a lot of viruses,” and reducing new infections is the best way to combat it, said Dr. Adam Lauring, an expert in infectious diseases at the University of Michigan, said. in Ann Arbor.
Loyce Pace, who heads the nonprofit Global Health Council and is a member of Elected President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 advisory board, said the same precautions have consistently advised scientists to ‘still work’ and it’s still important ‘.
“We still want people to disguise themselves,” she said Thursday in a webcast hosted by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
‘We still need people to meet with people outside their household. We still need people to wash their hands and be really vigilant about public health practices, especially as these variants emerge. ‘
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AP medical author Carla K. Johnson in Seattle reported.
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