Will the vaccine also be effective against the new Covid variant identified in the UK?
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One of the certainties we have gods virus is that they are constantly changing: sometimes they die out, sometimes they spread without altering their behavior and, rarely, they cause dramatic changes.
The variant Is Covid’s VUI-202012/01 more aggressive?
The question now facing scientists is simple: the variant VUI-202012/01 does it fall into the latter category? There is a greater risk to the salute? Or its recent rapid spread inSouthern England did it occur because people are ignoring anti-Covid restrictions?
Chris Whitty, chief medical officer of the British government, attempted to give an answer.
“As a result of the rapid spread of the new variant, preliminary modeling data and rapidly increasing incidence rates in South East England, the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag) now believes the new strain can spread. faster. We have alerted the World Health Organization and are continuing to analyze the available data to improve our understanding”.
How has Covid-19 changed?
The appearance of the new variant is alarming, although it should be pointed out that there have been several previous mutations of Covid-19.
Last month, for example, the Danish government shot down millions of visoni after it emerged that hundreds of Covid-19 cases were associated with variants of Sars-CoV-2 carried by farmed mink. Last October, research suggested that a variant of the coronavirus which manifested itself among Spanish agricultural workers quickly spread to Europe and accounted for the majority of cases in the UK.
What scientists now have to address are concerns about the impact of the new variant VUI-202012/01, particularly if it will lead to an increase in cases of serious Covid disease or actually result in fewer cases. The other big question is whether the new variant will be able to bypass the protection offered by Covid-19 vaccines.
Ma Ewan Birney, Deputy Director General ofEuropean Molecular Biology Laboratory and joint director ofEuropean Bioinformatics Institute di Cambridge, is optimistic: “If the new variant had a major impact on the severity of the disease, we would have already seen it“, he has declared. Finally, according to Birney, there is every reason to think that vaccines will still work against this new strain, even if further evaluation is needed.
Source: The Guardian
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