The corona virus broke into our lives about a year ago, since it has been closely monitored by the best researchers around the world. During this time the virus was taken from hundreds of thousands of patients and characterized by the genetic sequence of the virus. In each case, the genetic sequence that contains about 30,000 bases (letters) contains at least one base change.
Such a change (known as a mutation) is completely random and in most cases does not change the properties of the virus. Sometimes some of the changes impair the vital processes of the virus and inhibit the spread of the virus, such changes will disappear from the virus population pretty quickly. In even rarer cases, such a change can cause the virus to have a more efficient activity for it and may spread around the world at a faster rate than the original virus.
Fear of a more serious illness
For viral researchers (epidemiologists) and epidemiologists, tracking the accumulation of changes in the viral genome allows tracking the development chains of new variants of the virus and examining the spread of viruses around the world. About two months ago a new variant of the corona virus was discovered in England that began to spread in the south of England and is now found in a growing proportion of the viruses sampled in the last month. This variant contains 17 changes from the original virus, 8 of which are found in the “spike” protein, the external protein of the virus that allows the binding and penetration into the cell.
This protein is a relatively large protein identified by the immune system. Some of the 8 changes have been seen before but not all of these changes combined. Two of these changes showed better ability to bind to the cellular receptor in culture cells and some of the changes showed a decrease in the binding of some of the antibodies generated against the virus.
Therefore this variant requires monitoring and it will be necessary to test its new properties in the laboratory and in real conditions. The spread of the virus in the UK population is not necessarily due to increased capabilities of the virus but can certainly be the result of a number of over-distributors causing the widespread spread. That is, at present, despite the findings, there is no conclusive evidence that the virus is more contagious. In any case, from the data obtained so far, it does not appear that the current variant causes a more severe disease than the original virus.
Are the new vaccines effective against the mutation?
The big concern is of course that the immune response that has developed against the vaccine will not be able to stop the new variant. However, it is important to remember that all vaccines that have been approved and a large proportion of those in the various stages of development already contain the sequence that encodes the “spike” protein. In other words, the vaccines of Pfizer, Modern, Astrasnica and the Biological Institute cause the production of the complete protein of the “spike”. Our immune system recognizes small and different sections of the protein against which it responds.
The immune system produces a series of antibodies that attack the protein from different directions, so that eight changes can not affect all the segments identified by the immune system. Therefore in my opinion the chance that the vaccine will no longer work against the current variant is low, on the other hand there may be some decrease in the effectiveness of the vaccine because some of the antibodies created may not detect the new variant. I mention that vaccines are more effective in preventing disease than we dared to hope two months ago so even if the effectiveness goes down it is not the end of the world and any case with current technology can produce customized vaccines very quickly.
It is important to remember that most existing vaccines (other than the flu vaccine) do not develop virus strains that do not respond to the vaccine. Such an event is rare for two main reasons: one vaccines often inhibit more than one area of the virus and therefore the virus needs to accumulate a lot of mutations to overcome the immune system response that develops following the vaccine, and the other, the vaccine usually prevents the virus from spreading in the body and population. And the amount of changes that accumulate is small.
In conclusion, more research is needed to understand the practical importance of the new variant, and in the meantime it is desirable that most of the population be vaccinated as soon as possible in order to prevent the formation of additional new variants.
And a member of the “Madat” association.