PARIS: As the British coronavirus variant occupies countries’ pandemic plans due to its increased transmissibility, other mutations to the Sars-CoV-2 are provoking concern among scientists who are scrambling to work out if they will still respond to vaccines.
In particular, one mutation, known as E484K, detected initially in South Africa and on subsequent variants in Brazil and Japan, has raised alarm among researchers.
Ravi Gupta, professor of microbiology at the University of Cambridge, said it is this mutation and not the much-covered British variant that is “the most worrying of all”.
Although research into the new variant is limited, a Brazilian study this month looked at a patient who had recovered from Covid-19 only to become reinfected with the new, mutated strain.
Brazil has suffered another blow as the country recorded 1,274 new Covid-19 deaths in a day, bringing the country s death toll to 205,964, the health ministry said.
As the British coronavirus variant occupies countries pandemic plans due to its increased transmissibility, other mutations to the Sars-CoV-2 are provoking concern among scientists who are scrambling to work out if they will still respond to vaccines.
The mutated variant of coronavirus, similar to the highly infectious British and South African strains, was discovered in Japan last week in four people who had come from Brazil.