(Connor Boyd) The new strain of coronavirus spreading through Britain has a ‘striking’ amount of mutations, scientists have claimed.
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by Connor Boyd, December, 16th , 2020
Members of the UK’s Covid-19 Genomics UK Consortium (COG-UK), who have been investigating the evolved strain, say they have uncovered 17 alterations, which they described as ‘a lot’.
Many of the changes have occurred on the virus’s spike protein, which it uses to latch onto human cells and cause illness.
Alterations to the spike are significant because most Covid vaccines in the works, including Pfizer/BioNTech’s approved jab, work by targeting this protein.
It is feared these changes could also stop people from becoming immune if they have been infected with a different strain previously.
But scientists, including England’s chief medical officer Chris Whitty, have said there is ‘currently no evidence’ the mutation — which has been spotted in Wales, Scotland, Denmark and Australia — will have any impact on vaccines.
Professor Nick Loman, from the Institute of Microbiology and Infection at the University of Birmingham and COG-UK member, said: ‘There is actually 17 changes that would affect the protein structure in some way that distinguish this variant from its kind of common ancestor of other variants that are circulating, which is a lot.
‘It’s striking. There’s a really long branch going back to the common ancestor, and it’s a matter of great interest as to why that is the case.”
Mapping of coronavirus samples confirmed to have the mutations of the VUI – 202012/01 shows that almost all of them have been in England (large green circle denotes the proportional number of samples in England, not the geographic area covered), but it has also been found in Scotland, Wales and Denmark
Surveillance of the strain shows it is increasing faster than all other strains except the dominant one, and has been making up an increasing share of the total infections (The new strain is shown in pink, and the timeline runs from May to December)
Most Covid vaccines work by training the immune system to recognise the virus’s spike proteins and attack them when the virus tries to infect in future.
But if the shape of the spike proteins are altered through mutations, the virus may be able to slip by the body’s natural defences.
The new strain, called ‘VUI – 202012/01’, was first picked up in September in Kent and appears to be linked to an explosion of infections in London and the South East.
There have been more than 1,000 confirmed cases of the new strain, mostly in southern England. But exact locations have not been revealed.
COG-UK said it was spreading spreading faster than the dominant strain, which was imported by holidaymakers from Spain in the summer and now accounts for the majority of infections.
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Source:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9058923/New-Covid-strain-17-mutations-scientist-say.html
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