A guide to what you need to know

Viruses mutate all the time and it is no surprise to experts that the coronavirus that emerged in China in late 2019 has undergone several significant mutations as the virus replicates and spreads.

But a new strain of the virus that has emerged in South Africa is worrying. Like a variant that has been discovered in the UK in recent months, the one that has emerged in South Africa is proving to be much more transmissible.

Although so far they can spread more easily, scientists do not believe that either variant is more deadly. But being more transmissible means more people can become infected, and this can mean more serious infections and, consequently, more deaths.

Questions are now being raised about whether coronavirus vaccines developed at breakneck speed in the last year, with Western leaders being developed by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, being effective against significant mutations. of the virus, such as that identified in South Africa.

While scientists believe the UK variant is unlikely to affect the effectiveness of vaccines currently being deployed in the West, there is more uncertainty about the South African strain.

Experts want to point out that there are still many things we don’t know about the new strain, although research is being done on it and that of the UK and urge people not to panic. Here’s what we know so far:

On December 18, South Africa announced the detection of a new variant of the coronavirus that was rapidly spreading to three provinces in the country and was becoming the dominant strain in the Eastern Cape, Western Cape and KwaZulu provinces. -Natal.

South Africa named the variant “501Y.V2” because of the N501Y mutation they found in the ear protein that the virus uses to access cells in the body. This mutation, among others, was also found in the new strain that the UK identified in December (but is estimated to have been in circulation since September), both considered to be increasing the transmissibility of the virus, making it disseminate more efficiently.

With authorities in the UK and South Africa, who alerted the World Health Organization (WHO) to new mutations in December (both countries are recognized for their genomic sequencing or “surveillance” of the virus), l ‘WHO noted that although they were found in the UK (called “VOC-202012/01”, with VOC meaning “Variant of Concern”) and South Africa shared the N501Y mutation, they are different.

The variant in South Africa involves two other mutations in the ear protein (E484K and K417N, among others) that are not present in the UK strain, and experts said these could affect the functioning of vaccines against the Covid-19.

Some experts and health officials are concerned about the South African variant, now better known as “501.V2”. So far, it has only been found in a handful of cases, the WHO noted on Tuesday, though in a growing number of countries, including the United Kingdom, France, Switzerland, Japan, Austria and Zambia.

Several countries have banned flights from South Africa (and the UK) as a result of new variants of the virus to try to stop its spread.

Earlier this week, UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the variant found in South Africa was of particular concern. “I am incredibly concerned about the South African variant and that is why we took the steps we took to restrict all flights from South Africa,” he told the BBC’s “Today” program on Monday.

“This is a very, very important issue … and it’s even more of an issue than the new UK variant,” he said, without further explanation.

On Tuesday, the former head of the FDA, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, warned that vaccinating Americans against Covid is more critical than ever, especially because the new South African variant appears to be inhibiting antibody drugs and is spreading elsewhere.

“The South African variant is very worrying right now, as it looks like it may overlook some of our medical countermeasures, particularly antibody drugs,” Gottlieb told CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith” on Tuesday.

“Right now this strain seems to be prevalent in South America and Brazil, the two parts of the world right now that are in their summer, but they are also experiencing a very dense epidemic, and that’s worrisome.”

For its part, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Sunday that scientists are investigating variants “to better understand how easily they could be transmitted and whether currently authorized vaccines will protect people against they “.

“Currently, there is no evidence that these variants cause more serious disease or increase the risk of death. New information is rapidly emerging on the virological, epidemiological and clinical characteristics of these variants,” he added.

As countries soar to launch vaccination programs or accelerate those already underway, such as the UK, experts noted that one of the biggest potential consequences of emerging variants is their “ability to evade natural or vaccine – induced immunity “.

“Both natural infection vaccination and SARS-CoV-2 (the coronavirus) produce a ‘polyclonal’ response to various parts of the ear protein. The virus is likely to accumulate multiple mutations in the ear protein to evade vaccine-induced immunity or natural infection, “the CDC said Sunday in its summary of emerging variants.

The possibility of evading vaccine-induced immunity is, for the CDC, the most troubling potential consequence of emerging strains “because once a large proportion of the population is vaccinated, there will be immune pressure that could promote and accelerate ‘appearance of these variants by selecting for’ escape mutants’. “

The CDC stressed, however, that “there is no evidence that they are passing and most experts believe that escape mutants are unlikely to appear due to the nature of the virus.”

How did it originate?

Experts have stressed that how and where these variants originated is not clear, it is unfair to “blame” countries for mutations, as they could have originated anywhere but been discovered by certain countries that “sought” them. “, that is, those who perform advanced virus surveillance and are therefore likely to find more mutations.

The UK variant, for example, was found by the “Covid-19 Genomics UK Consortium”, which performs random genetic sequencing of positive Covid-19 samples across the UK Since its creation in April 2020. , the consortium has sequenced 170,256 genomes of the virus from people infected with Covid-19. Use the data to track outbreaks and identify virus variants and publish your data weekly.