Scientists warn that the uncontrolled coronavirus outbreak in Brazil could threaten the global fight to end the pandemic.
The more contagious, vaccine-repellent P1 variety that showed up there has already become dominant in most states of the country, and there’s no sign of it slowing down.
“This information is an atomic bomb,” Dr. Roberto Kraenkel, a biological mathematician at the Covid-19 Brazil Observatory, told the Washington Post.
‘I am surprised by the levels [of variants] found it. The media don’t understand what this means. All of the worrying variants are more transmissible … and this means an accelerated phase of the epidemic. A disaster.’
The variant has already been identified as the cause of 15 cases in nine US states.
Fortunately, rising vaccination coverage and declining daily infections in the US are helping to stop the outbreak – but that’s not the case in Brazil, where ICs are teetering on the brink of full capacity as the chaotic vaccine rollout struggles to gain ground.
“No country will be safe unless all countries have their outbreaks under control,” Dr. Denise Garret, vice president of applied epidemiology at Sabin Vaccine Institute in Washington State, told DailyMail.com.
Coronavirus is spreading ‘uncontrolled’ in Brazil, giving rise to a more contagious, vaccine-blunting variant, known as P1, that has spread to at least 20 countries (pink). As long as the South America outbreak continues, the rest of the world could still be vulnerable to new mutants, experts warn
In the US, the P1 variant has yet to become widespread, but if it does, it has the potential to reinfect hundreds of millions of people who have not been vaccinated – even if they have previously had COVID-19. Only one new case has been detected this month, but that is likely to change
‘We can vaccinate as much as we want in the US and achieve herd immunity, but as long as we have outbreaks that are out of control in other countries, the borders will still be open.
‘In countries such as Brazil where there are no restrictions and the virus is loose, it is really a breeding ground for variants’
All viruses are constantly mutating.
Like cancer, the more they spread and make copies of themselves, the more they mutate – and the more important those mutations will become.
SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was actually slow to mutate significantly.
But in late 2020, variants began to emerge around the world, as rising cases in most countries gave the virus plenty of opportunities to mutate.
And the way this unfolded in Brazil was particularly ripe for dangerous variants.
The country had already experienced gruesome early waves. Antibody tests suggested that about 76 percent of the hard-hit city of Manaus was infected in October, after the first wave of the pandemic there.
That should have given three-quarters of the Amazon city natural immunity to reinfection.
The P1 has been detected in at least nine US states, but it is widely believed to be an underdigit, due to the sparse genomic sequencing used to find variants
It didn’t.
Manaus was stunned by a second wave of infections in January. The devastation reached a new peak, with 100 people dying every day in the city of two million people.
The PI variant was discovered there in December and is likely to have fueled the high rates of infections and, worse, reinfections in the city.
Laboratory studies and real-life data suggest that mutations to a location known as E484K helps the variant evade antibodies caused by previous infection with older variants or vaccines designed to protect against it.
Immune pressure stimulates these kinds of mutations.
When viruses are faced with immunity that prevents them from hijacking cell machines to copy themselves, only strains with mutations that make them less affected by vaccines survive.
And then they thrive.
“This new species escaped immunity, and it’s starting all over and now it’s the predominant line in Brazil,” said Dr. Garrett.
Of US cases of the P1 variant, she said, “They are apparently low, but make no mistake, this variant is more transmissible,” and is probably more widespread than testing for it.
The good news, Dr. Garrett notes that vaccines against the Brazilian variant seem to work, contrary to early warnings.
Natural immunity to previous infection appears less resilient to the challenge of the variant.
And with only 10 percent of Americans fully vaccinated, hundreds of millions of Americans – including the 29 million who have already had COVID-19 – could still be vulnerable to the P1 form of the virus.
‘If there are no control measures, it is only a matter of time. Here [in the U.S.] the good news is that we are vaccinating, and we are vaccinating quickly, because we need to vaccinate as many people as soon as possible to get this under control and so far it seems that these variants don’t escape the vaccine, at least not for serious illness and hospitalization, ”said Dr. Garret.
But there is no guarantee. The virus is evolving rapidly and … if it continues to develop in other countries, it could eventually be here.
‘What happens in other countries really has an effect on other countries.’
This, she says, is the strongest argument for equitable distribution of vaccines around the world.
‘I understand the nationalism of vaccines – countries want to vaccinate their populations first – but if there is no fair distribution there will always be a threat, as long as there are countries where the outbreak is still breaking out there will always be a threat to the world . ‘