RIO DE JANEIRO, April 14 (Reuters) – The Brazilian variant of coronavirus P1, behind a deadly wave of COVID-19 in the Latin American country that triggered the international alarm, moves in ways that could make it better to evade antibodies, according to scientists studying the virus.
Research conducted by the Fiocruz Institute of Public Health on variants circulating in Brazil has found mutations in the peak region of the virus that is used to enter and infect cells.
These changes, scientists said, could make the virus more resistant to vaccines – targeting the spike protein – with potentially serious implications for the severity of the outbreak in the most populous nation in Latin America.
“We believe there is another escape mechanism that the virus creates to steal the antibody response,” said Felipe Naveca, one of the study’s authors and part of Fiocruz, in the city of Amazon Manaus, where the P1 variant is believed to have appeared.
Naveca said the changes appear to be similar to the mutations seen in the even more aggressive version of South Africa, against which studies have shown that some vaccines have substantially reduced their effectiveness.
“This is particularly worrying because the virus continues to accelerate in its evolution,” he added.
Studies have shown that variant P1 is 2.5 times more contagious than the original coronavirus and more resistant to antibodies.
On Tuesday, France suspended all flights to and from Brazil in an attempt to prevent the spread, as Latin America’s largest economy is becoming increasingly isolated.
The variant, which quickly became dominant in Brazil, is believed to be an important factor behind a second massive wave that has brought the country’s death toll to over 350,000 – the second largest in the world behind the United States.
The outbreak in Brazil is increasingly affecting younger people, hospital data show that in March more than half of intensive care patients were 40 years of age or younger.
For Ester Sabino, a scientist at the University of Sao Paulo’s medical school who conducted the first sequencing of the coronavirus genome in Brazil, the mutations in variant P1 are not surprising, given the rapid rate of transmission.
“If you have a high level of transmission, as you currently have in Brazil, the risk of new mutations and variations increases,” she said.
So far, vaccines, such as those developed by AstraZeneca and Sinovac in China, have proven effective against the Brazilian variant, but Sabino said other mutations could jeopardize this.
“It’s a real possibility,” she said. (Reporting by Pedro Fonseca, written by Stephen Eisenhammer Editing by Daniel Flynn and Steve Orlofsky)