Before I discuss about the New Variants of COVID-19 Lets us know
What are Mutations.?
The virus that causes COVID-19 keeps changing. There
are a bunch of new versions and they’re more contagious. One’s
hit the UK hard and is spreading around the world. There
are others, In South Africa, Brazil, Nigeria too. But
should we be worried? So
how big a problem are these mutations? Will
the vaccines still work? And
the big question many of us want to be answered “when will this all end”? 2020
gave us the kind of pandemic no one alive today had ever seen before.
A year later 2021 is starting out with the same pandemic only now it’s on
steroids. One
reason is there are new versions of the virus. But
scientists say that’s not exactly a surprise. Viruses
mutate all the time. It's
just what they do. Viruses
usually spread within species such as animal to animal, person to person. But
sometimes they mutate and do things like jump the species barrier, That’s
what happened with swine flu, MERS, and this one “SARS-CoV-2”.
The virus exists to replicate, evolve and spread. And
it does that by hijacking a cell’s reproductive system to
make copies of itself so it can spread to other cells and on to other hosts. And
as it gets copied, over and over again, sometimes there are mistakes. Think of
them as typos. Those
changes are called mutations. But
every now and then a mutation comes along that makes the virus better at what
it does. The
key is opportunity. For
example, healthy people have immune systems that fight the virus for maybe a
couple of weeks. But
people who are already really sick with weak immune systems could play host to
the virus for much longer. It
gives the virus more time to mutate. That’s
what they think happened with these new strains.
In the UK a single variant of the virus known as B.1.1.7 has
23 mutations. It
showed up in September 2020. And
according to the World Health Organization, they think it could be about 70%
more contagious than the original Wuhan strain. Let’s
look at it this way using what’s called the reproduction number. This
coronavirus was known to spread from one person to two to three other people on
average. The
R number was between 2.5 and 3.5. That’s
without things like social distancing and lockdowns to control the spread. With
those measures, the R number came down.
The virus was infecting maybe just one other person or fewer which is enough to
stall the spread. But
then this new UK strain showed up and pushed the R number back up to as high as
1.7. And
this strain has traveled. But
there are other strains too. It’s
important to point out, though, that while these new strains might be easier to
catch, the
WHO says the data coming out of the UK so far suggests no change in disease
severity or in the number of people dying. OK,
here’s the next question.
Will the vaccines still work on those mutated viruses?
Well the WHO says right now the answer is yes. Still,
it’s not impossible that more genetic changes down the line mean we need to
tweak the vaccines. It’s
why scientists around the world have been keeping an eye on how this virus is
changing. They’ve
done more than 300,000 gene sequences of the virus since the pandemic began. So
there is a strategy to track and deal with mutations. But
the WHO says that if anything the mutations are a wake-up call. And
that it’s up to us as individuals and governments to do what we can to stop
the virus from spreading and mutating in the first place. Look at what happened at the end of the year. People
traveled, they spent time with friends and families all
against health advice.
What does all of this mean for the end of the pandemic?
Well,
right now the plan is still to vaccinate as many people as possible, to build
immunity as fast as possible even
though vaccines can only do so much. Scientists
knew the coronavirus was going to evolve from the get-go. But
the health advice to sit tight and stay safe that hasn’t changed. And
for those of us who want a hard and fast answer on when that'll all be over well,
the WHO says anybody who gives you a date they’d only be guessing. As
with every story about the coronavirus the experts are still trying to work out
the science.
And stay as accurate as possible. So
make sure to visit trusted sources to get health advice and information stay
safe…
