Written By: Longjam Dineshwori | Updated : August 19, 2020 9:20 AM IST
The World Health Organization (WHO) has said that there’s no evidence suggesting that the new strain could lead to a more severe disease.
The novel coronavirus, which is responsible for the ongoing COVID-19, continues to baffle scientists with many unknown traits. While the world is still trying to find out the cure for the deadly viral outbreak that started in China's Wuhan city in December 2019, the virus has apparently mutated into a more infectious variant. According to media reports, a new strain of the coronavirus that is believed to be 10 times more infectious has been detected in Malaysia.
Called D614G, the mutation was found in three of the 45 cases in a cluster that started after a restaurant owner returned to the country from India. The man had violated his 14-day home quarantine. He has been sent to prison for five months and fined. The same strain was also detected in another cluster in people returning from the Philippines.
In a Facebook post on Saturday, Director-General of Health Noor Hisham Abdullah raised concern that the present research on vaccines may be incomplete or ineffective against the strain. Abdullah said that the mutation infects other individuals 10 times more and spreads more easily by an individual 'super spreader'. This mutation has also been found predominantly in Europe and the US.
However, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said that there's no evidence suggesting that the new strain could lead to a more severe disease.
A study published in Cell Press also suggested the mutation is unlikely to have a major impact on the efficacy of vaccines currently under development. The study, however, acknowledged that there is strong evidence that a new form of the coronavirus has spread from Europe to the US.
It noted that while the new mutation of COVID-19 may make the virus more infectious, it doesn't seem to make them any sicker than earlier variations of the virus. The study authors from the La Jolla Institute for Immunology and the Coronavirus Immunotherapy Consortium said that the new variant has now become the predominant variant in Europe and US.
According to the researchers, the mutation affects the spike protein, the structure the virus uses to get into the cells it infects. Now they are checking if this also affects the efficacy of the vaccines under development. While most of the vaccines being developed target the spike protein, they all use older strains of the virus.
While the researchers have found that the new variant spreads faster than the old strain of the virus, they did not find evidence of any impact on disease severity. In fact, they hope that as SARS-CoV-2 infection spreads, the virus may become less pathogenic.
Mutation is part of a virus life cycle, and so the new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) will mutate too. But researchers at the Texas A&M University-Texarkana suggested that a virus is less likely to mutate to a more aggressive version. In fact, they said that RNA viruses are more likely to mutate into a weaker version. Also, the original strain and its mutations may share similar characteristics and traits, they added.
Therefore, if COVID-19 is mutating, it's actually good news as a vaccine will be more effective against variants with this mutation, the Scripps researchers noted. Once we have a COVID-19 vaccine, it will most likely work against all the foreseeable mutations, like the way vaccines for measles, mumps, rubella and H1N1 do they added.
