OT: What you need to know about the coronavirus variants. Viruses are always mutating and taking on new forms. The coronavirus has thousands of variants that have been identified. But several, including variants first found in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil, are highly transmissible and have sparked concerns that vaccines may be less effective against them.
The New York variant (B.1.526)
Where is it now?
Officials have reported this variant in at least 14 other states, including Texas, Wyoming and Maryland, Bloomberg reported.
What makes it different?
Some scientists are concerned that this variant may be more transmissible than previous versions. Scott Gottlieb, former director of the Food and Drug Administration, expressed worry that a mutation on this variant could enable it to reinfect people who have already had the virus.
Will vaccines work?
This variant seems to have some resistance to existing vaccines, although not as much as the variant first detected in South Africa, Fauci said on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.” Gottlieb said he was also concerned that this variant could partly elude the effects of vaccination.
The South Africa variant (B.1.351)
Where and when was it discovered?
This mutation, also referred to as 501Y.V2, was found in South Africa in early October and announced in December, when the country’s health minister said the strain seemed to affect young people more than previous strains. This variant may have contributed to a surge of infections and hospitalizations across South Africa.
Where is it?
This mutation has been identified in at least four dozen countries. On Jan. 28, South Carolina officials announced that this variant had affected two people there with no travel history — the first instances of this strain identified in the United States. It has since been found in more than two dozen other states.
What makes it different?
This mutation shares some similarities to the variant first identified in the U.K. and, like that strain, appears to be more transmissible. There is no evidence that it is more lethal. Gottlieb has suggested that this variant might be more resistant to antibody therapies.
There is some evidence that this variant could allow for reinfection: A man in France was in critical condition in mid-February after being infected with this strain four months after he was previously infected with the virus.
Will vaccines work?
The vaccines may have a diminished impact against this variant, but they probably will still be effective, top infectious-diseases expert Anthony S. Fauci said in January. Moderna has said its vaccine protects against the variant first identified in South Africa, with an important caveat: The vaccine-elicited antibodies were also less effective at neutralizing this mutation in a laboratory dish.
Pfizer and BioNTech released their own study, not yet peer-reviewed, that suggests their vaccine effectively neutralizes this variant, though was slightly less effective.
On Jan. 29, Johnson & Johnson said its single-shot vaccine was robustly effective in a massive global trial, but that its protection against sickness was weaker in South Africa. Biotechnology company Novavax has also indicated that its vaccine was significantly less effective during a trial in South Africa.
In South Africa, the distribution of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine has been halted. The vaccine did not provide sufficient protection against mild and moderate cases caused by a new variant, health officials said.
India is in the midst of a devastating second wave of COVID-19. For the past several weeks, cases and deaths have skyrocketed. The country is recording more than a quarter million cases per day.
Preliminary evidence suggests that B1.617 is more contagious than previous strains of the virus. A study published Tuesday found that the L452R mutation may enhance the ability of viruses to infect human cells in the laboratory. The variant in California, which carries this same mutation, is about 20 percent more transmissible than older strains of the virus.
The situation in India sounds remarkably similar to what has happened in Brazil, South Africa and now also Iran, says infectious disease scientist Kristian Andersen at Scripps Research Institute. "These countries already had a lot of people infected [in the first wave], and there was a sense that the country had reached some level of herd immunity," he says. But then, over time, as people's immunity waned, more contagious variants came along and sparked another surge.
B.1.617 is also spreading quickly in India. Over the past few months, it has become the dominant strain in the state of Maharashtra, Nature has reported.
Several studies have linked the two key mutations in B.1.617 with an increased ability for the virus to evade the immune system. So, most likely, COVD-19 vaccines will still work against B1.617, but they could be slightly less effective, Cambridge University's Ravi Gupta said on Twitter: "Likely vaccines will protect against severe illness and death but not against infection in those [people] with poorer immune responses."
There are also signs that people who have already had COVID-19 can be reinfected more easily with this strain, Gupta wrote, especially over time, as their natural immunity wanes. These reinfections may be driving this second, explosive surge in India.
If B1.617 does increase the chance of reinfection (or breakthrough infections in people who have been vaccinated), then this new variant could drive surges in other parts of the world where a population's immunity, natural or vaccine-derived, is on the decline.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/04/24/988744811/people-are-talking-about-a-double-mutant-variant-in-india-what-does-that-mean b.