No major concern for experts
Berlin (dpa) – A new Corona variant discovered in France should be checked by experts – but it has not yet recognized a major risk.
“We should observe these as well as other variants, but there is no reason to be particularly concerned about this variant,” said Richard Neher, an expert on virus variants at the University of Basel (Switzerland), the dpa news agency. The US epidemiologist Eric Feigl-Ding wrote on Twitter: “I’m not very worried about B.1.640.2. I doubt that it will prevail over Omikron or Delta. “
French researchers led by Didier Raoult from the IHU Méditerranée Infection Institute had demonstrated the new variant in twelve patients in south-east France, as the team wrote in a preprint paper at the end of December. The patient, who was probably infected first in France, came back from a trip from Cameroon. The study has not yet been peer-reviewed and published in a specialist journal.
The team led by Raoult writes as a conclusion: “It is too early to speculate about the virological, epidemiological or clinical properties of the new variant.” But your data is another example of how unpredictable variants of the coronavirus could occur. Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) said on “merkur.de”: “We still know too little to be able to say anything useful.”
Mutations in the spike protein
B.1.640.2 has some mutations in the so-called spike protein, which experts already know from the particularly contagious omicron variant, as Raoult and his team write. The spike protein is particularly important when assessing variants because it binds the virus to human cells and also because vaccines target this protein. Mutations in the spike protein can cause the virus to spread faster. It is also possible for vaccines to lose their effectiveness.
However, B.1.640.2 does not seem to have spread much so far, says the Basel expert Neher. She is “thus” one of the many “that has not prevailed against Omikron and Delta at least so far”.
B.1.640.2 belongs to a kind of variant family that has been on the radar of the World Health Organization (WHO) since November. WHO epidemiologist Abdi Mahamud referred to this in Geneva. According to WHO information, 1,640 was first registered in September from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and under observation in November, but according to the available data it has not spread significantly, said Mahamud. “We’ll keep an eye on them.”
The WHO distinguishes three categories of potentially dangerous corona variants: (1) variants of concern, (2) variants of interest and (3) variants under observation. B. 1.640 is in Category 3, as are two other variants, Omikron in Category 1.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 220104-99-587583 / 2