Brazil’s Covid strain may become more dangerous: Experts

RIO DE JANEIRO/ LONDON: Brazil’s P1 coronavirus variant, behind a deadly Covid-19 surge in the Latin American country that has raised international alarm, is mutating in ways that could make it better able to evade antibodies, according to scientists studying the virus.

Research conducted by the public health institute Fiocruz into the variants circulating in Brazil found mutations in the spike region of the virus that is used to enter and infect cells.

Those changes, the scientists said, could make the virus more resistant to vaccines with grave implications for the severity of the outbreak in the country.

“We believe it’s another escape mechanism the virus is creating to evade the response of antibodies,” said Felipe Naveca, one of the authors of the study and part of Fiocruz in Manaus, where the P1 variant is believed to have originated. Naveca said the changes appeared to be similar to the mutations seen in the even more aggressive South African variant. “This is particularly worrying because the virus is continuing to accelerate in its evolution,” he added.

In an unrelated but bizarre development, federal prosecutors in the Brazilian state of Roraima are investigating reports that illegally-mined gold is being exchanged for Covid-19 vaccines in the Yanomami indigenous reserve.

More than 170 former world leaders and Nobel laureates have urged US President Joe Biden to make Covid-19 vaccines more readily available by waiving US intellectual property rules. They made the call in an open letter shared by Oxfam.

Germany’s health care system is getting stretched to the brink, with many hospitals overwhelmed with Covid-19 patients and rising case numbers pointing to tougher days ahead. The occupancy rate in ICUs rose to 88% on Wednesday, the highest in more than a year. On Thursday, Germany reported 31,117 new cases, the most since midJanuary.