Just as the world seemed to be turning the corner in its fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, a new mutation in the novel coronavirus has started to make things look bleaker again, as several countries imposed fresh lockdowns to curb fresh transmission.
But before one looks to cancel yearend plans (or if you’re an investor, consider booking profits on your portfolio), it’s important to understand what has happened.
Science fiction movies have created a fear of virus “mutations” that threaten to wipe out the population but scientists point out that viruses change all the time as part of their evolutionary process. These changes take place in order to help the virus survive, and by way of natural selection, most changes die out while a select few help it to propagate.
Also, most of these changes do not have any impact on the effects the viruses produce in the host, or on the efficacy of the treatments to combat them.
In fact, the SARS-COV-2 virus has seen thousands of small changes. At a structural level, the WHO has identified six structures, or “clades” as they are called, along with 14 subclades, of the COVID-19 virus. In fact, SARS-COV-2 is known to change more slowly compared to other RNA viruses.
With the UK announcing that a new variant of the virus (termed VUI 202012/01, for Variant Under Investigation, year 2020, month 12, variant 01), which appears to spread faster than other variants, scientists believe that while the new strain warrants close scrutiny, there is no evidence yet that it is deadlier.
Will existing COVID-19 vaccines work against the new strain?
Scientists know that developing a vaccine against a particular virus is sort of working against a moving target, so that is built into their design, Brian Labus, assistant professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Nevada, told Healthline .
The various vaccines that have been developed so far have been tested against a broad range of the novel coronavirus.
“So there is every reason to think that the vaccines will still work against this new strain, though obviously that needs to be tested thoroughly,” Ewan Birney, deputy director general of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, told The Guardian.
“Up to now, I don’t think there has been a single variant that would be resistant. This particular variant in the U.K., I think, is very unlikely to have escaped the vaccine immunity,” Dr Moncef Slaoui, the chief science adviser for the U.S. government’s vaccine distribution effort, said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” adding that the possibility that new strains will be resistant to existing vaccines are low but not “inexistent”.
Besides, as some experts point out, some of the vaccines, such as Moderna’s, have been based on the experimental mRNA method, and repurposing the vaccine to fight against the new strain, should it be prove to be resistant to existing vaccines, will not be difficult.
Meanwhile, experts say till the impact of the new strain become clear, the best approach for the public would be to exercise social distancing, wear masks and wash hands frequently.
