World faces 4,000 Covid-19 strains, warns UK minister
Vaccine development minister says makers are upgrading their jabs to tackle newer strains of the virus
LONDON/WASHINGTON: There are around 4,000 coronavirus variants around the world prompting vaccine manufacturers, including Pfizer and AstraZeneca, to try to improve their shots, s British minister said.
Thousands of variants of the type of coronavirus that causes Covid-19 have been documented as the virus mutates, including the UK, South African and Brazilian strains which appear to spread more swiftly than others.
British vaccine deployment minister Nadhim Zahawi said it was unlikely that the current vaccines wouldn’t work against the new variants. Zahawi told Sky News, “All manufacturers, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Oxford-AstraZeneca and others, are looking at how they can improve their vaccine to make sure we are ready for any variant - there are about 4,000 variants around the world of Covid now.”
US CDC: British variant could be deadlier
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has analysed data on the new variant that originated in the UK and fears that it could be far more deadly than the earlier coronavirus strain, according to CNN.
The report quotes Rochelle Walensky, director of the US CDC, as saying, “We know some of the variants have increased transmissibility, there’s data that suggests that some of the variants, the B.1.1.7 variant, may actually... lead to increased mortality, and the jury’s still out with regard to how these vaccines are going to work against these variants.”
Scientists decode how coronavirus mutates
Scientists have identified a pattern of mutations in the coronavirus that help it evade the immune system’s antibodies, findings that shed light on how the virus may escape existing vaccines.
According to the researchers, including those from the University of Pittsburgh in the US, the coronavirus undergoes selective deletions in parts of its genetic sequence that encode for the shape of its spike protein.
The study, published in the journal Science, assessed nearly 1,50,000 gene sequences of the spike protein collected from many parts of the world, and found that in variants possessing the deletion mutations, formerly neutralising antibodies cannot grab hold of the virus.