Scientists trying to understand new virus variant

or two letters in the genetic alphabet that doesn’t make much difference in the ability to cause disease,” said Dr. Philip Landrigan, a former

Q Centers for Disease : What’s worrisome Control and Prevention scientist about the British variant?

Q who directs a global : What do the mutations health program at Boston mean for treatments?

A

College. : It has many mutations

A more concerning situation — nearly two is when a virus mutates dozen — and eight are on by changing the proteins the spike protein that the on its surface to help virus uses to attach to and it escape from drugs or the infect cells. The spike is immune system, or if it acquires what vaccines and antibody a lot of changes that drugs target. make it very different from Dr. Ravi Gupta, a virus previous versions. expert at the University of Cambridge in England, said modeling studies suggest it may be up to two times more infectious than the version that’s been most common in England so far. He and other researchers posted a report

Q

of it on a website scientists : What about use to quickly share developments, vaccines? but it has not been

A

formally reviewed or published : Scientists believe current in a journal. vaccines will still be effective against the variant, but they are working to confirm that. On Wednesday, British officials reiterated that there is no data suggesting the new variant hurts the effectiveness of the available vaccines.

Vaccines induce broad immune system responses besides just prompting the immune system to make antibodies to the virus, so they are expected to still work, several scientists said.

Does it spread more easily? Make people sicker? Mean that treatments and vaccines won’t work? Questions are multiplying as fast as new variants of the coronavirus, especially the one moving through England and now popping up in the U.S. and other countries.

Scientists say there is reason for concern and more to learn but that the new variants should not cause alarm.

Worry has been growing since before Christmas, when Britain’s prime minister

Q said the coronavirus : How does the variant variant seemed to spread become dominant? more easily than earlier ones and was moving rapidly

A through England. On : That can happen if Tuesday, Colorado health officials one variant takes hold said they had found and starts spreading in it there. an area, or because “super

Here are some questions spreader” events helped it and answers on what’s become established. known about the virus so It also can happen if a far. mutation gives a new variant an advantage, such as helping it spread more easily than other ones that are circulating. Scientists are still working

A to confirm whether the : “There’s no indication variant in England spreads that either of more easily, but they are those is true, but clearly finding some evidence that those are two issues we’ve it does. The variant “outcompetes got to watch,” Landrigan the other strains said. As more patients get and moves faster and infects infected with the new variant, more people, so it wins “they’ll know fairly the race,” Landrigan said. soon if the new strain

The British variant was makes people sicker.”

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: Where did the new variant come from? A

: New variants have been seen almost since the virus was first detected in China nearly a year ago. Viruses often mutate, or develop small changes, as they reproduce and move through a population.

Most changes are trivial. “It’s the change of one first detected in September, WHO officials said. A new South African variant also has emerged.

Q: Does it make people sicker or more likely to die?

A WHO outbreak expert, Maria Van Kerkhove, said that “the information that we have so far is that there isn’t a change” in the kind of illness or its severity.

A

: A couple of cases in England raise concern that the mutations in some of the emerging new variants could hurt the potency of drugs that supply antibodies to block the virus from infecting cells.

Studies on antibody response are under way, Van Kerkhove said.

One drugmaker, Eli Lilly, said that tests in its lab suggest that its drug remains fully active.