“I did not see this coming, it is a flank attack just when we started assessing the impact of the South African strain. Only the declaration of a state of emergency can prevent the spread of these strains at national level. Otherwise, local restrictions only force exports from red to green areas. If we do not introduce a state of emergency in the next 2-3 weeks, I expect the South African and Brazilian strains to become significant in May and sustain the current wave until the end of June or to form the basis of a possible wave 4 at the end summers ”, says Octavian Jurma.
Why is the Brazilian strain so dangerous
The Brazilian variant of SARS-CoV-2, called P1 by specialists, is considered much more dangerous than the British version (B.1.1.7) or the South African version (B.1.351). The data collected by researchers so far show that the Brazilian strain is more contagious than the other two mutations, which in turn are considered highly transmissible, according to data published by BBC.com.
In addition to the mutations found in the UK and South Africa, the Brazilian version seems to bypass the immune system acquired from COVID-19 disease, following infection with SARS-CoV-2, the initial variant in Wuhan, which generated the year past the pandemic. Scientists have not yet given a clear answer as to whether current vaccines are effective against the strain in Brazil, given that the sera were created on genomic sequencing of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in Wuhan.
Concerns are linked to the fact that the Brazilian strain manifested itself in Manaus, the capital of the federal state of Amazonas, with a population of about 2 million. The population of Manaus became overwhelmingly infected with SARS-CoV-2 in the first wave of the pandemic, with nearly 80 percent of people living with the disease last year, according to TheLancet.com, a reputable medical journal with US subsidiaries. and China.
The origin of the Brazilian strain: in the middle of a population with immunity
Specifically, the percentage of Manaus residents who developed antibodies to the virus rose from 4.8% in April to 52.5% in June. As of October 2020, 78% of the population in Manaus had COVID-19. Researchers estimate that 67% is the threshold at which a population reaches herd immunity (passive immunization) without the help of a vaccine (active immunization).
Despite the fact that almost 8 out of 10 Brazilians in Manaus have contracted the virus, the number of new infections has started to rise alarmingly again since December. The number of COVID-19 hospitalizations reached 3,431 in January 2021, compared to 552 in December last year, according to the study published in “The Lancet”.
How the researchers discovered the P1 variant
In an attempt to find out why more and more Brazilians are re-infected with SARS-CoV-2, although theoretically they should have been immune, the researchers retroactively discovered two generic mutations in the virus, which they named P1. and P2, both absent in the samples collected between March and November 2020, but present in those from December. The data was enough to alarm NERVTAG researchers in the UK (no – New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group), who described the Brazilian mutation as a “worrying variant” because it is even more contagious than the British strain and is believed to be could evade the immune system, precisely because it comes from an area where almost the entire population has gone through COVID-19 disease, writes “The Guardian”.
Do current vaccines against new strains work or not?
Furthermore, the researchers consider several scenarios: either the percentage of infections in Manaus was overestimated, or the infected patients did not develop antibodies in a sufficiently large proportion, or – indeed, the darkest variant – the P1 mutation is resistant to antibodies, which would mean that a vaccine dedicated to this strain is needed to eradicate it.
“Studies on T cells – the ‘smart’ cells of the immune system – suggest that when we are vaccinated with any of these vaccines, we generate a complex immune response and thus, even if we could be re-infected with these variants, we would not get sick. serious. T cells will recognize several “parts” of the virus, not just this part of the Spike protein that is quite modified, “explained geneticist Mircea Iliescu. According to a laboratory study published Monday in the New England Journal of Medicine, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is effective against the Brazilian strain of SARS-CoV-2 virus.
COVID balance: the number of new infections in Romania has exploded
A total of 4,989 new cases of people infected with SARS-CoV-2 have been reported in the last 24 hours. Also yesterday, 93 deaths were reported, and a number of 1,126 people were hospitalized at the ATI. In the last 24 hours, 24,469 RT-PCR tests and 11,150 rapid antigen tests were processed.
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