After a year of battling COVID-19 which claimed the lives of 1,689,588 and infected 17,679,645, the world seems to be facing a new strain of the virus.
So what do we know about the new virus mutation?
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the new variant of the virus is 70% more transmissible than the current strains and seems to be pushing a speedy spike in new infections in London and southern England.
However, “there’s no evidence to suggest it is more lethal or causes more severe illness,” or that vaccines would be less effective against it, he replied.
Britain warned the World Health Organization that the new strain identified last week was the possible reason for the in infections, accounting for around 60% of London’s cases.
On its part, the WHO urged European countries on Sunday to strengthen efforts to curb the spread of the new COVID-19 strain.
The new strain has been also detected in Denmark, the Netherlands and Australia. However, Australia has so far seen only one case and the strain has not spread further,
Virus mutations are not new, and scientists have previously discovered thousands of different mutations among coronavirus samples. Nevertheless, the majority of these mutations have no impact on how quickly the virus spreads or how severe symptoms are.
Researchers are still assessing whether the strain will be more or less receptive to the vaccines currently being rolled out.
Richard Neher of the University of Basel’s Biozentrum in Switzerland and Andreas Bergthaler from the Austrian Academy of Academy of Sciences (CeMM) in Vienna have announced the vaccines generate an immune response against several virus features at the same time. Accordingly, even if one of those characteristics changes, the immune system would still be able to recognize the pathogen and protect the vaccine recipient.
“I don’t see any reason for alarm at the moment,” Neher said, but added it was necessary to monitor further developments.
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