New Exciting Covid Viral Diversity to Enrich Us! By Brian Simpson
Diversity is a strength and enriches us. But does that apply to viral diversity as well? The new Covid kid on the block, the C.1.2 strain from diverse South Africa, has a mutation rate of 41.8 mutations per year, which is almost double the current global mutation rate seen in any other variant. Not a lot is known, especially whether it is worse than the Delta strain, but the scientists are proclaiming that three jabs will be needed to deal with it. As I see it, that is pure speculation. I note the remarks of Dr Feigl-Ding, quoted below: “‘We can't just keep boosting the vaccines,' 'We have to basically stop the transmission worldwide because the more bodies we give the virus, the more practice chances the virus will eventually adapt and become even more evasive or contagious.'” Or, I believe, live with it, and let natural immunity work its magic, which got the human race this far.
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“A new highly contagious variant of Covid-19 is the fastest mutating strain yet and three doses of vaccine will be required to protect against it, a U.S. epidemiologist has warned.
Scientists say the C.1.2 strain in South Africa has a mutation rate of 41.8 mutations per year, almost double the current global mutation rate seen in any other variant of concern so far.
The strain was first identified by scientists in South Africa in May and has since been found in England, China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mauritius, Portugal Switzerland and even New Zealand.
Not a lot is yet known about C.1.2, which is yet to make its way to Australia, where there have been outbreaks of the Delta strain, chiefly in Sydney and Melbourne.
But this new strain has experts on edge, including Dr Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist and Senior Fellow at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington DC.
'It's got lots of troubling mutations and it's the most mutative of all variants,' he told the Today show on Wednesday.
'It's the most genetically distanced from the Wuhan 1.0 virus. Whether or not it's the next big thing, it's not necessarily that, it's the fact that the virus is mutating so much faster than we expected.'
Dr Feigl-Ding, who is a member of the World Economic Forum's Global Shapers program, a Soros Fellowship recipient and a former Democratic Party candidate, advocated a Covid elimination strategy.
'We can't just keep boosting the vaccines,' Dr Feigl-Ding said.
'We have to basically stop the transmission worldwide because the more bodies we give the virus, the more practice chances the virus will eventually adapt and become even more evasive or contagious.'
He also warned two doses of the vaccine may not be enough with Israel already introducing third booster shots.'
'Unless you're triple vaxxed, you're not considered fully vaxxed. And that approach as much as it sucks, it is the reality that with the face of these new variants,' Dr Feigl-Ding said.
'Right now vaccines do work, but obviously the work against hospitalisations and deaths really well.
'But for just casual breakthrough mild infections, with Delta it's taught us that there's a lot more breakthroughs than we know and after six months it does tend to wane a little bit.
'This is why the sooner we end it, the sooner we can stop dealing with these upgrade software upgrade patches that we have do with the vaccine.”
“A new Covid variant detected in South Africa has made headlines around the world.
On Monday the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in South Africa issued an alert about the “C.1.2 lineage”, saying it had been detected in all provinces in the country, but at a relatively low rate.
C.1.2 was first detected in May, the alert said, but Delta is still the dominant variant spreading in South Africa and the world.
A pre-print, non peer-reviewed paper published about the variant said C.1.2 “has since been detected across the majority of the provinces in South Africa and in seven other countries spanning Africa, Europe, Asia and Oceania”.
The C.1.2 lineage has drawn the attention of scientists because despite its low rate in the population, it possesses mutations within the genome similar to those seen in variants of interest and variants of concern, like the Delta variant, as well as some additional mutations.
So what do we know about the new variant, and how concerned should we be?
Has the World Health Organization listed it as a variant of interest or concern?
Not yet. The National Institute for Communicable Diseases is continuing to monitor the frequency of C.1.2 and examine how it behaves. Tests to assess the impact of the mutations it possesses on infectiousness and vaccine resistance are still under way. So far, the virus has not fulfilled the WHO criteria to qualify as a “variant of concern” or “variant of interest”.
Variants of concern, such as Delta, are those that show increased transmissibility, virulence or change in clinical disease, and a decreased effectiveness of public health and social measures.
Variants of interest are those shown to cause community transmission in multiple clusters, and which have been detected in multiple countries, but have not yet necessarily proven to be more virulent or transmissible.
Then why was an alert issued?
A virologist and lecturer in immunology and infectious diseases with the University of Sydney’s Central Clinical School, Dr Megan Steain, said it’s because of the particular mutations that C.1.2 contains.
“It contains quite a few key mutations that we see in other variants that have gone on to become variants of interest or concern,” Steain said. “Any time we see those particular mutations come up, we’d like to keep an eye on the variant to see what it’s going to do. These mutations may affect things like whether it evades the immune response, or transmits faster.”
It will take some time for scientists to do the laboratory tests to see whether the virus is in fact fitter, she said.
“While we can say that it has a few key mutations that have led to other variants being more infectious, often what we find is the mutations work in synergy together which can overall lead to a fitter virus, potentially, or a weaker virus.
“All these studies in the lab take quite a while. There is a lot of work to be done.”
Is there a chance this variant might die out?
Yes. Covid-19 variants emerge all of the time and many of them disappear before they can become a real problem. Many virus variants are very fragile.
The key mutants are the ones that survive the changes and continue, and start to overgrow the variants of the past, which is what we saw with Delta.
“C.1.2 would have to be pretty good, pretty fit, and pretty fast to outcompete Delta at this stage,” Steain said. “I think we’re still very much at a point where this could die out, the prevalence is really low.
“We saw this with the Beta variant, and other variants of concern, where it looked like there could be a problem, they even had areas where they were transmitted and spread quite well. But then they haven’t really taken hold over time, and were overtaken by other variants of concern that are able to transmit faster. And so they just essentially die out.
“That could easily still happen with C.1.2.”
What do scientists mean when they talk about a ‘fitter’ variant?
Using Delta as an example, it means it has gained some mutations which allow it to replicate faster and get into cells more efficiently.
“We refer to it as the ‘affinity’; the ability by which it’s able to grab on and attach to host cell receptors that allow the virus particles to enter into cells,” Steain said. “It’s better primed and ready-to-go to grab on to cells and get in and start an infection in the first place. And then it seems to replicate a bit faster as well, so it’s making more virus particles in a shorter period of time.”
Do we know if vaccines will be effective against C.1.2?
“We can take an educated guess based on some of the mutations that it has, in that it’s similar to what we’ve seen in other variants like beta, as well as Delta,” Steain said.
“So we think, perhaps, the serum won’t neutralise as well as it would against an ancestral strain. But until we actually do those experiments it’s speculative really. We’ve got to bear in mind that the vaccine so far looks like it’s holding up really, really well in terms of preventing severe infection and hospitalisations and deaths from variants. They’re really good at preventing that.
She said there was no need to panic.
“It’s important, however, to keep an eye on the other variants that are out there and just watch and see how they go.”
South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases said: “We are being cautious about the implications, while we gather more data to understand virus of this lineage.
“Based on our understanding of the mutations in this variant, we suspect that it might be able to partially evade the immune response, but despite this, that vaccines will still offer high levels of protection against hospitalisation and death,” the institute said.”
The Covid world just keeps on turning. Imagine if C.1.2, which sounds like it is out of Star Wars, itself evolves beyond the vaxes?
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