London, Nov 26: Scientists across the globe are expressing their concern and worry about the new Covid-19 variant, called B.1.1.529, which could be potentially more infectious and may have evolved from a patient with an untreated HIV-AIDS condition.
London, Nov 26: Scientists across the globe are expressing their concern and worry about the new Covid-19 variant, called B.1.1.529, which could be potentially more infectious and may have evolved from a patient with an untreated HIV-AIDS condition. Scientists are working to understand the potential implications of the new variant. About 50 confirmed cases have been identified in South Africa, Hong Kong and Botswana.
WHO is scheduled to hold a crucial meeting followed by a press conference on Friday afternoon to provide latest updates about the new variant and what it could mean for the world.
Countries scrambled on Friday with India joining UK, Germany and many other countries in banning travel from South Africa and its neighboring countries.
In Asia, including in India, stock markets have had a rough day with stocks crashing for a large number of companies, especially those related to travel and hospitality.
Prof Francois Balloux, the director of the UCL Genetics Institute, was quoted by The Guardian as saying that the large number of mutations in the variant apparently accumulated in a “single burst”, suggesting it may have evolved during a chronic infection in a person with a weakened immune system, possibly an untreated HIV/Aids patient.
“I would definitely expect it to be poorly recognised by neutralising antibodies relative to Alpha or Delta,” he said. “It is difficult to predict how transmissible it may be at this stage. For the time being it should be closely monitored and analysed, but there is no reason to get overly concerned unless it starts going up in frequency in the near future.”
Dr Tom Peacock, a virologist at Imperial College London, posted details of the new variant on a genome-sharing website, noting that the “incredibly high amount of spike mutations suggest this could be of real concern”.
In a series of tweets, Peacock said it “very, very much should be monitored due to that horrific spike profile”, but added that it may turn out to be an “odd cluster” that is not very transmissible. “I hope that’s the case,” he wrote.
Why is the new variant evoking concern?
B.1.1.529 has a very unusual constellation of mutations, which are worrying because they could help it evade the body’s immune response and make it more transmissible, scientists have said. Any new variant that is able to evade vaccines or spread faster than the now-dominant Delta variant might pose a significant threat as the world emerges from the pandemic.
Dr Susan Hopkins, the chief medical adviser to the UK Health Security Agency, said the R value, or effective reproduction number, of the B.1.1.529 variant in the South African province of Gauteng, where it was first found,was now 2 – a level of transmission not recorded since the beginning of the pandemic before restrictions began to be imposed. For an R of anything above 1, an epidemic will grow exponentially.
Ravi Gupta, a professor of clinical microbiology at Cambridge University, said work in his lab found that two of the mutations on B.1.1.529 increased infectivity and reduced antibody recognition. “It does certainly look a significant concern based on the mutations present,” he said. “However, a key property of the virus that is unknown is its infectiousness, as that is what appears to have primarily driven the Delta variant. Immune escape is only part of the picture of what may happen.”