Does it spread more easily? Make people sicker? Do you mean that treatments and vaccines will not work? Questions are multiplying as fast as new coronavirus strains, especially the one now moving through England. Scientists say there are concerns, but that new strains should not cause alarms.
“There is no evidence that there is any increase in the severity” of the COVID-19 of the latest strain, the head of emergencies at the World Health Organization, Dr. Michael Ryan.
“We don’t want to react too much,” U.S. government chief infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN.
Concern has been growing since Saturday, when the British prime minister said a new strain or variant of the coronavirus appeared to be spreading more easily than previous ones and was moving rapidly across England. Dozens of countries banned flights from the UK and the south of England underwent strict closure measures.
Here are some questions and answers about what is known so far about the virus.
Q: WHERE DID THIS NEW FORM COME FROM?
A: New variants have been seen almost since the virus was first detected in China almost a year ago. Viruses usually mutate or develop small changes as they reproduce and move through a population, something “natural and expected,” the WHO said in a statement Monday.
“Most mutations are trivial. It’s the change of one or two letters of the genetic alphabet that doesn’t make much of a difference in the ability to cause disease, ”said Dr. Philip Landrigan, a former scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who runs a program of World Health in Boston.
A more worrying situation is when a virus mutates by changing the proteins on its surface to help it escape drugs or the immune system, or if it acquires many changes that make it very different from previous versions.
Q: HOW IS A DOMINANT THING DONE?
A: This can happen if a strain is a “founding” strain: the first one to pick up and start spreading in an area or because “super dispersal” events have helped it settle down.
It can also happen if a mutation provides an advantage to a new variant, such as helping it to spread more easily than other circulating strains, as may be the case in Britain.
“It’s more contagious than the original strain,” Landrigan said. “The reason it’s becoming the dominant strain in England is because it competes with the other strains and moves faster and infects more people, so it wins the race.”
Moncef Slaoui, the top scientific adviser on the U.S. government’s COVID-19 vaccine campaign, said scientists are still working to confirm whether the strain in England spreads more easily. He said it is also possible that the “planting” of hidden cases “went into the shadows” before scientists began looking for it.
The strain was first detected in September, according to WHO officials.
Q: WHAT IS SICK ABOUT THIS IT?
A: It has many mutations (almost two dozen) and eight are found in the spike protein that the virus uses to attach and infect cells. The ear is the target of vaccines and antibody drugs.
Dr Ravi Gupta, a virus expert at Cambridge University in England, said modeling studies suggest it may be up to twice as infectious as the strain that was hitherto more common in England. He and other researchers published a report of it on a website that scientists use to quickly share developments, but has not been formally reviewed or published in a journal.
Q: DOES IT MAKE PEOPLE SICK OR MORE LIKELY TO DIE?
A: “There is no indication that it is true or true, but it is clear that these are two issues that we need to watch out for,” Landrigan said. As more patients become infected with the new strain, “they will soon know if the new strain makes people sicker.”
A WHO outbreak expert, Maria Van Kerkhove, said Monday that “the information we have so far is that there is no change” in the type of disease or the severity of the new strain.
Q: WHAT DO CHANGES MEAN FOR TREATMENTS?
A: A couple of cases in England are concerned that mutations in some of the new emerging strains could harm the potency of drugs that supply antibodies to block the virus from cell infection.
“Studies on the response to antibodies are ongoing. We expect results in the coming days and weeks, ”Van Kerkhove said.
A drug maker, Eli Lilly, said tests performed in his lab with strains containing the most troubling mutation suggest the drug remains fully active.
Q: WHAT ARE VACCINES?
A: Slaoui said the presumption is that current vaccines would still be effective against the variant, but that scientists are working to confirm that.
“My expectation is that this will not be a problem,” he said.
UK officials have said they “do not believe there is an impact on vaccines,” Van Kerkhove said.
Vaccines induce broad immune system responses, in addition to causing the immune system to produce antibodies against the virus, so they are still expected to work, several scientists said.
Q: CAN TRAVEL RESTRICTIONS BE GOOD?
A: Landrigan thinks he can.
“If the new strain is in fact more contagious than the original strain, it is very, very reasonable, to restrict travel,” he said. “It simply came to our notice then. Whenever you can break the transmission chain you can stop the virus “.
CNN quoted Fauci as saying he did not criticize other countries for suspending trips to England, but that he would not advise the United States to take that step.
The presence or extent of the new strain in the United States is unknown at this time.
Q: WHAT CAN I DO TO REDUCE MY RISK?
A: Follow the advice to wear a mask, wash your hands often, maintain social distance, and avoid congestion, public health experts say.
“The conclusion is that we need to suppress the transmission” of all strains of viruses that can cause COVID-19, said WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“The more we allow it to spread, the more mutations will happen.”
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Associated Press writers Christina Larson in Washington and Candice Choi in New York contributed to this report.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department is supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.