The race against the virus that causes COVID-19 has taken a new turn: mutations are emerging rapidly, and the longer it takes to vaccinate people, the more likely it is that a variant can emerge that will affect current tests, treatments and vaccines. .
The coronavirus is becoming more genetically diverse, and health officials say the high number of new cases is the main reason. Any new infection allows the virus to mutate as it makes copies of itself and threatens to reverse the progress made so far to contain the pandemic.
On Friday, the World Health Organization urged more efforts to detect new variants. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said a new version first identified in the UK could become dominant in the US in March. While it won’t cause more serious illness, it will lead to more hospitalizations and deaths just because it spreads much more easily, the CDC said, warning of “a new phase of exponential growth.”
“We take it really seriously,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the US government’s top infectious disease expert, on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“We now have to do everything we can … to get the transmission as low as possible,” said Dr. Michael Mina from Harvard University. “The best way to prevent mutant strains from emerging is to slow transmission.”
So far, vaccines seem to remain effective, but there are signs that some of the new mutations could undermine tests for the virus and reduce the effectiveness of antibodies as a treatment.
“We are in a race against time” because the virus “may encounter a mutation” that makes it more dangerous, “said Dr. Pardis Sabeti, an evolutionary biologist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
Younger people may be less willing to wear masks, avoid crowds, and take other measures to prevent infection because the current strain doesn’t seem to make them very sick, but “in one mutation change,” she warned. Sabeti documented a change in the Ebola virus during the 2014 outbreak that made things much worse.
CHANGES IN THE INCREASE
It is normal for viruses to have minor changes or mutations in their genetic alphabet as they reproduce. Those who help the virus thrive give it a competitive edge and thus crowd out other versions.
In March, just a few months after the coronavirus was discovered in China, a mutation called D614G emerged, increasing the chance of spreading. It quickly became the dominant version in the world.
Now, after months of relative dormancy, “we are beginning to see a striking evolution” of the virus, biologist Trevor Bedford of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle wrote on Twitter last week. “The fact that we’ve seen three alarming variants since September suggests that more are likely to come.”
One was first identified in the United Kingdom and quickly became dominant in parts of England. It has now been reported in at least 30 countries, including the United States.
Shortly thereafter, South Africa and Brazil reported new variants, and the major mutation in the version identified in Britain appeared in another version “circulating in Ohio … at least as early as September,” said Dr. Dan Jones. , a molecular pathologist at Ohio State University who announced that finding last week.
“The important finding here is that it is unlikely to be travel-related,” and may instead reflect that the virus independently develops similar mutations as more infections occur, Jones said.
That also suggests travel restrictions may not be effective, Mina said. Because the United States has so many cases, “we can grow our own varieties that are just as bad or worse” as those in other countries, he said.
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RISKS OF TREATMENT, VACCINE, REINFECTION
Some lab tests suggest the variants identified in South Africa and Brazil may be less susceptible to antibody drugs or restorative plasma, antibody-rich blood from COVID-19 survivors – both of which help people fight the virus.
Government scientists are “actively investigating” that possibility, Dr. Janet Woodcock of the US Food and Drug Administration to reporters Thursday. The government is encouraging the development of multiple antibody treatments instead of single antibody drugs to have more ways to fight the virus in case one proves ineffective, she said.
Current vaccines elicit immune responses broad enough to remain effective, many scientists say. For enough genetic change, it may eventually be necessary to adjust the vaccine formula, but “it will probably be in the order of years if we use the vaccine properly rather than months,” said Dr. Andrew Pavia of the University of Utah on Thursday on a webcast hosted by the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
Health officials are also concerned that people could get COVID-19 a second time if the virus changes enough. Re-infection is currently rare, but Brazil has already confirmed a case in someone with a new variant who became ill with an earlier version several months earlier.
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WHAT MUST WE DO
“We’re seeing a lot of variants, viral diversity, because there are a lot of viruses,” and reducing new infections is the best way to curb it, said Dr. Adam Lauring, an infectious disease expert at the University of Michigan. in Ann Arbor.
Loyce Pace, who heads the nonprofit Global Health Council and is a member of President-elect Joe Biden’s COVID-19 advisory board, said the same precautions scientists have advised all along “still work and still do. to be important”.
“We still want people to mask themselves,” she said on Thursday at a webcast hosted by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
“We still need people to limit the gathering of people outside of their household. We still need people to wash their hands and be really vigilant about those public health practices, especially now that these variants are popping up. “
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AP Medical Writer Carla K. Johnson in Seattle has reported.
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