âEscape Mutationsâ May Drive New COVID Resurgence
Feb. 1, 2021 CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, MD, announced Monday that the federal government was sending technical experts to help investigators in Maryland and South Carolina after those states confirmed three cases of the B.1.351 variant of the coronavirus.
B.1.351 was first identified in South Africa. The CDC and World Health Organization have called it a âvariant of concernâ because it has developed changes to its genetic code that make it more menacing than the original version of the virus.
None of the people who caught this version of the coronavirus had traveled, and they were not related, which shows the variant is probably already spreading from person to person in the community.
The coronavirus variants causing panic around the world may be starting in people with weak immune systems who spend weeks or months battling the virus, scientists have warned.
Doctors in the US revealed a Covid strain living in an immunosuppressed patient for 150 days changed so much that they could find 50 differences in its genetic code.
These changes, which happen randomly as the virus reproduces in order to spread, are what can drive changes in its shape which can affect the way the virus functions.
Fifty per cent of the alterations in the US patient occurred on the virus s spike protein, which it uses to bind to human cells, despite the spike accounting for just two per cent of the virus genetic code.
An influential COVID-19 model has predicted a possible "spring spike" in coronavirus deaths in the United States if emerging variants rapidly spread and people let down their guard against the virus.