Monthly Archives: February 2021

[Chairman of the European Commission: The European Union has launched a new plan to study the mutation of the covid virus] The Finance Associated Press, February 17th, on February 17, local time, European Commission President Von der Lein stated that the European Union launched a study on the covid virus on the same day The mutation plan is called the “HERA Incubator Project”. The plan will prepare the next generation of covid vaccines that may need to be produced. In an earlier interview, Von Delane stated that the “HERA Incubator Program” will bring together outstanding resources from health authorities and laboratories, and allocate dedicated funds.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said Tuesday that the international expert group on novel coronavirus traceability has reached a consensus with its Chinese counterpart ona joint traceability summary report.
Peter Embarek, the panel leader, stressed that further research is needed to gather more evidence to explore all hypotheses about the origin of novel coronavirus.

Embarek said at a press conference that the panel had reached an agreement with its Chinese counterparts on the final report, especially the key contents of the report, including its main conclusions, findings and recommendations.
In the next few days, the expert group will work with their Chinese counterparts to first complete the interim report, followed by a detailed report in the next few weeks, including the technical details, background, research methods and other descriptive parts of the report.

Embarek stressed that the report was a joint report by the international panel of experts and their Chinese counterparts, not a judgment on the conclusions of the other side, but a reflection of the consensus reached by the two sides on the main findings, conclusions and recommendations.

He also said the panel is not ruling out any hypotheses about the origin of the novel coronavirus and will review them regularly in the future based on new evidence and research.

A laboratory in Lisbon has identified two suspected cases of a novel coronavirus variant found in Brazil for the first time, local media reported Monday.

The local health department is conducting an analysis to confirm whether the novel coronavirus infected by the suspected case corresponds to the mutated virus.
The two suspected cases were found in nucleic acid test samples, which tested positive for novel coronavirus in Lisbon, the Portuguese capital.

In recent days, the mainstream media of many Latin American countries have paid high attention to the investigation on the origin of novel coronavirus conducted by the joint expert group of China and the World Health Organization in Wuhan, and generally recognized the scientific and objective conclusions about novel coronavirus in the preliminary investigation results of the expert group.

Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest circulation newspaper page at 9 p.m. local time on its website published stories reported that China – who will be coronavirus traceability research joint panel held a press conference announced that there is no evidence to suggest that will be coronavirus originated in wuhan south China seafood market, there is no evidence that before December 2019 will be coronavirus has been spread in wuhan.
It also quoted Peter Embalek, the panel’s chair, as saying it was “highly unlikely” that Novel Coronavirus originated from a laboratory leak.
Meanwhile, experts say the novel coronavirus may have spread to other parts of the world weeks before the first cases were detected in Wuhan.

Argentina’s state news agency, according to the American news agency 9, through extensive visits and in-depth investigation in wuhan, China, China with the who expert group in China will be coronavirus source investigation and make a preliminary decision, that will be coronavirus “is more likely to be” is the intermediate host to humans, animals also “may” be spread directly or through the cold-chain food to humans, but it is “highly unlikely” to humans through laboratory.
The identification clarifies the fact that Novel Coronavirus did not come from the Wuhan Virus Institute, the article said.

Region important transnational media venezuela south station is continuous attention to the world in the near future WeiGuoJi experts in wuhan, and reported that experts after visiting wuhan virus research institute, to the completeness of the security, equipment, etc are highly, is also in China’s expert team to will study coronavirus.
At the same time, WHO officials also expressed appreciation for China’s full cooperation in the investigation.

In addition, the mainstream media from Colombia, Peru, Cuba, El Salvador and other Latin American countries have reported that the preliminary investigation results of the investigation in Wuhan published by the joint China-WHO expert group are scientific and objective conclusions on the research on the origin of novel coronavirus.

Liang Wannian, the Chinese leader of the joint expert investigation team, introduced the molecular epidemiology of the origin of the research results, said that the bat, pangolin coronaviruses found in the two animals are not enough to become the direct ancestor of novel coronavirus.
Animals such as minks and cats may also be potential hosts.

A woman has died from the Ebola virus in the eastern province of North Kivu, the Ministry of Health of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) confirmed Monday.
Health authorities are working with the World Health Organization to track down close contacts of the woman.

The last Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo ended in November.
Health experts fear that a new outbreak of Ebola could overwhelm the country’s health system, which is under strain from the new outbreak.

Twelfth round?

Congo’s health minister, Etany Longundo, told state television on Sunday that the woman, who lived in a village near the city of Butembo in North Kivu province, had developed typical symptoms of the Ebola virus on Monday and died in a hospital in Butembo on Wednesday.
Her blood test came back positive for Ebola.

Longgondo said her husband was previously infected with Ebola and recovered.
Close contacts of the deceased are being tracked by local health authorities.

The Ebola virus, which got its name from its discovery in 1976 near the Ebola River in the Democratic Republic of Congo, is spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person or animal.
Once infected, people will experience fever, vomiting, bleeding and other symptoms.

The New England Journal of Medicine previously reported that Ebola can survive for more than three years in the semen of male survivors.

It was not immediately clear whether the latest confirmed cases marked the 12th outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In November 2020, the 11th round of Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) was declared over. A total of 130 confirmed cases have been reported, including 55 deaths and 75 cured cases.

The World Health Organization stepped in

WHO has sent a team of experts to the area where the cases have been reported to assist local health authorities in the Republic of Congo to stop the spread of the virus, WHO Regional Director for Africa, Makidiso Rebecca Muti, said in a statement.

The WHO Regional Office for Africa said the area where the woman was diagnosed was the epicenter of the last outbreak and that “it is not uncommon for sporadic cases to continue after a pandemic.”

The World Health Organization confirmed that more than 70 people who had close contact with the woman had been traced, and that eradication efforts were under way wherever she had been.

In recent years, WHO has defined two Ebola outbreaks as public health emergencies of international concern.
One was the outbreak in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia in West Africa between 2013 and 2016, which killed more than 11,000 people.
The other was the tenth Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) from August 2018 to June 2020, which killed more than 2,000 people.

The two epidemics are worrying in parallel

Although vaccination has reduced the rate of Ebola infection, the country faces a number of challenges in the event of a new outbreak, including a worrying security situation on its eastern border.

Public health experts fear a renewed outbreak of Ebola will add to the misery in the central African country, whose healthcare system is already under strain from the new outbreak.

Jason Jindrachuk, an associate professor of infectious diseases at the University of Manitoba in Canada, is studying Ebola survivors in three countries in West Africa.
He told the Associated Press that while “early detection of cases would help control the epidemic quickly,” the last Ebola outbreak and a new outbreak soon after had stretched the country’s health system to its limits and would overwhelm it with another Ebola outbreak.

Nearly 700 people have died in the Democratic Republic of Congo after being infected with the novel Coronavirus, Agence France-Presse reported.

More than a year after the pandemic began to sweep the globe, as people cheered the arrival of a vaccine, new, more highly transmissible strains of the covid mutated strain began to emerge, causing new outbreaks in many countries.
At present, the mutant novel coronavirus reported by Britain has been discovered in 60 countries and regions around the world, and the mutant novel coronavirus reported by South Africa has been discovered in 23 countries and regions.
According to NextStrain, a real-time virus mutation tracking platform, as of January 2021, a total of 3,931 novel coronavirus genotypes have been mutated globally.
According to foreign media reported on February 2, local time, the mutation of the covid strain has been widely circulated in the UK, is still developing new mutations.
Why do viruses mutate?
Why is novel coronavirus mutating at such a crazy rate?
How will the mutation affect epidemic prevention and control and vaccine effectiveness?
Let’s draw a picture to illustrate the answers to these questions.
Article | | Amy diagram GH edit | Paella
1
Love mutated viruses
For the virus itself, mutations can be beneficial, neutral, or harmful.
The same is true for humans.
Mutation is the “nature” of the virus.
Viruses do not have independent living systems like bacteria, and can only survive by invading and parasitizing living cells.
Viral genes make mistakes as they replicate in large numbers inside cells.
When an error occurs, a mutation occurs.
The RNA virus that Novel coronavirus belongs to is more likely to mutate than the common DNA virus.
Why is that?
First of all, the genetic material of novel coronavirus is positive single-stranded RNA with 29,903 bases. When RNA viruses replicate, they need to use an enzyme (RDRP) to transcribe their genomes. The reason why RNA viruses are prone to mutation is precisely that this enzyme has a low error-correcting ability, and the mismatch rate of nucleotide will become high during genome replication.
This allows RNA viruses to mutate faster than DNA viruses and up to a million times faster than human cells.
Viruses mutate all the time.
In many cases, a mutation is simply a copying error on a single base.
Early in the outbreak, scientists discovered tiny mutations in novel coronavirus.
Sequencing of a virus sample from a Covid-19 patient collected on 8 January 2020 revealed a mutation in the 186th base of viral RNA, from C to U.
Sequencing of virus samples collected seven weeks later from a Guangzhou patient revealed mutations in two more bases.
The strain causing the new pandemic (SARS-CoV-2) accumulated mutations at a steady rate of one to two per month on average, but most of the mutations had no substantial consequences.
That’s because there are two different types of mutations.
Silent mutations do not change the proteins encoded by the genetic material.
Because the amino acids that make up proteins are encoded by three bases, many times a mutation in the third base letter can still encode the same amino acid, so it does not affect the virus’s mechanism of action.
The key is the remaining “non-silent mutation” possibilities.
In February 2020, scientists identified the mutant D614G virus that was then circulating in Europe and the Americas.
Why is it called D614G?
That’s because in the early days of the epidemic, the leading global strain of novel coronavirus was known as “strain D.”
However, the virus soon mutated — the 614 amino acid on the spike protein changed from aspartic acid (D) to glycine (G).
The D and G amino acids have very different properties, so the D614G mutation is not “silent.”
Studies have found that D614G mutation has higher transmission ability and faster replication rate, which obviously affects human survival.
Viral strains carrying the D614G mutation were far from becoming the global mainstream before March 2020, accounting for less than 10% of published strains globally, but had exceeded 90% by the end of June 2020.
What makes the D614G strain so infectious is that the mutation occurred in the spikelin region of the novel coronavirus, the bulges on the surface of the novel coronavirus that can bind to the ACE2 receptor on human cells, enter the cell, and infect it.
More worrying developments continue.
A month ago, the British government reported that a covid variant strain, known as B.1.1.7, was widespread in the country.
Subsequently, a new mutant strain, named B.1.351, was also reported in South Africa.
At present, “B.1.1.7” and “B.1.351” have rapidly spread to at least 60 countries.
Notably, in each of the variants, the scientists found a mutation in a protein called “N501Y.”
The mutation makes the virus more likely to bind to human cells, making it more infectious.
The “B.1.1.7” variant is estimated to be about 70 percent more infectious than the other variants.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said January 22 that a new study showed the mutated strain had increased its lethality by 30 percent.
2
Is the vaccine still effective against the mutant strain?
Since December 2020, health care workers in the Brazilian city of Manaus have seen a gradual increase in the number of cases of CoviD-19 and the number of deaths.
The sheer number of cases has overwhelmed almost all local medical institutions.
That surprised many scientists because three-quarters of the city had already been infected with the novel coronavirus, enough to achieve herd immunity without causing a massive outbreak.
In fact, after analyzing 31 virus samples taken in mid-December, scientists found that 13 of them were new, mutated strains.
Because novel coronavirus can be re-infected, areas that have theoretically received herd immunity are at risk of renewed outbreaks…
That raises concerns about whether existing covid vaccines will still be effective against the mutated strains.
In clinical trials in South Africa, where most subjects were infected with a variant of Novel Coronavirus, the overall effectiveness of the vaccine was significantly reduced, according to clinical data recently published by Johnson & Johnson and Novavax.
According to J&J, its vaccine was 72 percent effective in the United States, but only 57 percent effective in South Africa.
According to Novavax, the overall effectiveness of two doses of the vaccine was close to 90 percent in a British trial of 15,000 people, but dropped sharply to less than 50 percent in a South African trial of 4,400 people.
Fauci, an infectious disease expert in the United States, said that to restrain the mutation of the virus, the most fundamental is to prevent the virus from replicating in the human body, which means that the best way to fight the mutation of the virus is to speed up vaccination, race with the virus, to prevent the virus from infecting more people as much as possible.

British health experts have observed a new mutation in a previously reported sample of a variant called Novel Coronavirus in the UK that may help the virus evade attack by the body’s immune system.

Public Health England has named the new mutation observed in the virus as E484K.
This mutation has previously been observed in mutated viruses reported in South Africa.

Previously, researchers had observed the same mutation, known as the E484K mutation, in the novel coronavirus variant found in Brazil and South Africa, said Jonathan Stoyer, PhD, of the Francis Crick Institute in the United Kingdom.
From a virological point of view, the mutation is not unexpected, and whether it gives the virus a big growth advantage remains to be seen.

A mutant novel coronavirus was announced in the UK in December, and there is evidence that it is more transmissible.