A guide to what you need to know

Viruses move all the time and it is no surprise to experts, the coronavirus that appeared in China at the end of 2019 has undergone several significant mutations as the virus reproduces and spreads.

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

Although they are able to spread more easily, so far, scientists do not believe that any of the new variants is more deadly. But being more transmissible means that more people can become infected, and this could mean more serious infections and therefore more deaths.

Questions are now being raised as to whether coronavirus vaccines have developed at a rapid pace in the past year, with Western leaders being developed by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Oxford University and AstraZeneca being effective against significant mutations in the virus. as identified in South Africa.

While scientists believe that the British version is not likely to affect the effectiveness of vaccines currently being developed in the West, there are several uncertainties about the strain in South Africa.

Experts are keen to point out that there are still many things we don’t know about the new strain, although this and the UK strain are being researched and urging people not to panic. Here’s what we know so far:

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

South Africa named the variant “501Y.V2” because of the N501Y mutation they found in the spike protein that the virus uses to enter cells in the body. This mutation, among other things, was found in the new strain that the UK identified in December (but is estimated to have been in circulation since September), both of which are thought to increase the virus’s transmissibility, causing it to spread. more efficient.

With authorities in the UK and South Africa warning the World Health Organization (WHO) about the new mutations in December – both countries are notorious for their genomic sequencing or virus “surveillance” – the WHO noted that while both found in the UK (called “VOC-202012/01”, with VOC meaning “Worry variant”) and South Africa shared the N501Y mutation, they are different.

The South African variant carries two other spike protein mutations (E484K and K417N, among others) that are not present in the UK strain, and experts said they could affect how Covid-19 vaccines work.

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 said 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) due to new variants of the virus, in an attempt to stop its spread.

Earlier this week, British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the option found in South Africa was particularly worrying. “I am incredibly concerned about the South African version and that is why we have taken the measures we have taken to restrict all flights in South Africa,” he told BBC Today on Monday.

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

On Tuesday, former FDA chief Dr. Scott Gottlieb warned that vaccinating Americans against Covid is more important than ever, especially since the new South African variant appears to inhibit antibody drugs and is spreading elsewhere.

“The South African variant is very worrying at the moment because it seems to be able to avoid some of our medical measures, especially antibody drugs,” Gottlieb told CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith.”

“Right now this strain seems to be predominant in South America and Brazil, the two parts of the world right now that are in their summer, but which are also facing a very dense epidemic and that is worrying.”

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

Currently, there is no evidence that these variants cause more severe disease or an increased risk of death. New information about the virological, epidemiological and clinical characteristics of these variants is developing rapidly, she added.

As countries rush to start vaccination programs or speed up existing ones, such as the United Kingdom, experts have noted that one of the biggest potential consequences of emerging variants is “their ability to evade immunity. natural or vaccine-induced ”.

“Both vaccination against natural infection and infection with SARS-CoV-2 (coronavirus) produce a” polyclonal “response targeting several parts of the spike protein. The virus should likely accumulate multiple mutations in the spike protein to evade immunity. induced by vaccines or by natural infection, “the CDC said in a briefing on emerging variants on Sunday.

The ability to evade vaccine-induced immunity is, for the CDC, the most worrying potential consequence of emerging strains, “because once a large part of the population is vaccinated, there will be immune pressure that could promote and accelerate the emergence of such strains. variants by selecting for “escape mutants”.

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

How was it born?

How and where these variants appeared is unclear, experts point out, noting that it is unfair to “blame” countries for mutations, given that they could have come anywhere, but were discovered by some countries “in search of them”, ie those who perform advanced virus surveillance and are therefore likely to find more mutations.

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