The new variant of the coronavirus appears to be highly transmissible, but the big question is whether it is causing serious illness. In any case, poor countries will be hardest hit, writes The Guardian.
In early August, Gideon Schreiber and a group of virologists from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel began experimenting with the spike protein of the Sars-CoV-2 virus – a protein that allows the coronavirus to enter our cells – to see if they could predict future mutations that could lead to the emergence of dangerous new variants of COVID-19.
At the time, Schreiber noted with concern that there were many ways the spike protein could evolve. If all these mutations occurred simultaneously, this could lead to the emergence of a variant that would be both extremely transmissible and potentially capable of evading some of the body’s immune defenses, reducing the effectiveness of vaccines.
Three months later, Gideon Schreiber’s fears were justified. A variant known as B.1.1.529, which the World Health Organization named Omicron on Friday, has emerged in South Africa in the past two weeks with all the mutations predicted by Schreiber and his team.
“New options are the norm,” says Gideon Schreiber. “This case is unique as this variant has many more mutations than would normally be expected. These mutations can increase the evasion of the virus from immunity, making it even more problematic. It is not known at this stage whether this option will cause more severe illness. ”
Virology teams around the world are rushing to get their hands on the Omicron’s genetic sequence and try to figure out what might happen next. So far, work by bioinformatist Tulio de Oliveira, who runs gene sequencing institutions at two South African universities, has shown that this variant contains more than 30 mutations in its spike protein compared to the original Sars-CoV-2 strain. …
The most troubling of these are mutations that allow him to avoid antibodies from either a previous Covid-19 infection or vaccinations. “I expected the Omicron to deal a bigger blow to neutralizing antibodies caused by vaccine and infection than anything we’ve seen so far,” tweeted Professor Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.
According to Tulio De Oliveira, Omicron already accounts for 75% of the Sars-CoV-2 genomes tested in South Africa and has also been found in Botswana, Hong Kong and Israel. “It looks like it is highly transferable,” notes genomic scientist Yatish Turakhia, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, San Diego – In less than two weeks, it appears to have become the dominant option in South Africa, surpassing Delta.
How exactly Omicron came about remains a mystery. Scientists suspect that, as with the Beta variant, which also emerged in South Africa in 2020, the most plausible explanation may be that the virus may have grown and developed steadily in an immunocompromised person, probably an HIV patient. /AIDS. In South Africa, home to 8.2 million people living with HIV (more than anywhere else in the world), coping with COVID-19 is especially difficult because these patients have a difficult time getting rid of the virus, which means it can stay in their body.
But while many virologists expected the next major COVID-19 variant to be a sequel to Delta, Omicron has nothing to do with it. Instead, it combines some of the more problematic mutations seen in the Alpha, Beta, and Gamma variants, as well as some recently acquired ones.
Ravi Gupta, professor of clinical microbiology at the University of Cambridge, who said in an interview earlier this month to the Observer that he was 80% confident there would be a new supervariant, is worried. “This is not a twist in Delta, as people expected, but a new thing based on mutations that we saw before, and they all mixed into one virus,” the expert comments. – That worries me. It has had a long time to adapt and has obviously done a good job if we accept the rapid expansion in South Africa. Without concerted international action now, because of this option, we will face a much larger number of lost human lives around the world. ”
Scientists say travel bans will help slow the spread of Omicron, but it is nearly impossible to stop it. Instead, Ravi Gupta calls for testing all travelers for the new strain.
Meanwhile, vaccine manufacturers and scientists are trying to figure out how much Omicron can weaken the protection provided by existing COVID-19 vaccines. The four cases identified so far in Israel – all people who have just returned from African countries – have been infected despite being double-vaccinated. However, as pointed out by William Hainage, an epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health T.H. Chan, the more important question is whether the new variant causes severe illness in those it infects.
Delta also occurs in vaccinated people, Hanage said. “So there’s nothing special about it. Much of the talk about immune evasion is based on what we think we know from mutations in the spike protein. It is important to know what kind of disease occurs as a result of breakthrough infections and re-infections. However, for those parts of the world where high vaccination rates are a pipe dream, this could very well have serious consequences. ”
For high-income countries such as the United Kingdom, which has already begun re-injections, the impact of Omicron may be less severe, The Guardian notes. While this option may elude vaccines, all vaccines available still have many different ways to fight the coronavirus – for example, by stimulating T-cell immunity, Gideon Schreiber said.
In contrast, the full impact of this option is likely to be felt in countries such as South Africa, where only 24% of the population received two shots of COVID-19 vaccine. It is data from countries where few people are vaccinated that in the coming weeks and months will reveal the real power of Omicron.
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