My nephews told me there’s a new strain identified in the UK and vaccine won’t work for this mutation. Truth to this?
I try to keep my Covid news and thus the anxiety about it to a minimum.
That is likely untrue. The mutation in Britain is located on the spike protein, which basically allows the SARS-Cov-2 virus to enter the cell. It does not appear that there are any other genetic changes besides that....meaning no change to the replication factors or the course of illness in Covid-19. It may get the designation of SARS-CoV-3 soon, although this likely won't be enough to be considered that genetically distinct. It has also arisen multiple times in other populations in the world, but has not gotten traction like it did in the U.K.'s population.
This mutation does make the virus
more able to infect human cells, apparently, but does not change the course of the infection. Meaning, it is easier to get sick from it, and likely lowers the initial threshold required to begin an infection (which was ~1,500 viral particles introduced into a "healthy" person), but doesn't change the course of the disease, and
most likely,
will not affect the ability of the current vaccines to counter it with our immune response.
Virulence factors are usually involved with replication and factors that our immune system uses to identify the virus. None of those appear affected by this mutation. I do quantify that there is still work to be done to have a complete scientific understanding of what the mutation did.
This kind of mutation is actually very common. The more hosts a virus enters, the more likely this mutation occurs in response. However, I would caution that even though coronaviruses don't mutate at a high rate... say, as influenza does, this selection does make it more imperative to get people vaccinated quickly. If it is easier to infect human cells, logic dictates it will likely now infect more humans.... which gives it more opportunity to evolve a mutation that really IS problematic. Every viral replication done under the individual conditions that are each person's cellular makeup increases the chance that another mutation arises. It may be a 1 in 300 million chance to randomly spring a truly terrible mutation....... but if you give it 300 million chances....
