New strain of coronavirus AY.4.2 turned out to be 10-15% more infectious than “delta”
Scientist Jeffrey Barrett of the Senger Institute in Cambridge and François Ballou of University College London have announced that a new strain of coronavirus has emerged that is a continuation of the Indian delta strain, the Financial Times reported.
“Variant AY.4.2 was only recently discovered by virologists who tracked the genetic evolution of the” delta “, but it already accounts for almost 10% of infections in the UK,” – said in the article of scientists.
The new mutation, AY.4.2, discovered by British scientists, will not be able to supplant the dominant delta strain if its characteristics are not similar to this variant. The head of the laboratory of especially dangerous infections of the Federal Research Center for Fundamental and Translational Medicine, virologist Alexander Chepurnov told about this to Gazeta.Ru.
“If this strain is stronger and has the ability to multiply faster, then it can supplant other strains of the coronavirus. These are general biological patterns.
This requires either the same advantage as the “delta”, or the ability to attach to some other popular and widespread receptor. This variant of the virus, most likely, will become the next “disgusting”, – he noted.
The virologist explained that the delta mutation is located at the site of attachment of the cell to the receptor, which allowed the virus to become unrecognizable for antibodies and easier to enter the body.
“The virus clings to the cell, and then the cell itself transports it inside and includes it in the genetic system, after which it begins to produce new virus cells at the expense of its own resources. If this strain has something changed, but there is no specific mutation that gave the “delta” advantage, then it will die in the same way as everyone else. No other option is yet able to even closely compete with the “delta”, – said the virologist.
SARS-CoV-2 belongs to the group of viruses that regularly mutate to remain in the human population – it is not profitable for it to become more lethal, epidemiologist Eduard Shunkov added in an interview with Gazeta.Ru.
“Given the nature of the coronavirus, it can be expected that it will continue to mutate, but only those that will not cause severe consequences will be competitive strains. That is, if a virus is contagious and does not cause consequences, does not have a high mortality rate, then, accordingly, it will be more tenacious than the one that destroys its carriers, because with their death it will disappear from the population, ”the specialist noted.
Meanwhile, there are about 50 derivatives from the original delta strain in the world, but none of them has become more competitive due to changes in some properties, the virologist, professor of Moscow State University, Doctor of Biological Sciences Alexei Agranovsky told RBC.
“Option AY.4.2 certainly deserves close attention. If 8-10% of COVID-19 cases in England are associated with this variant, then it has the potential to spread further.
Even if it is actually 10-15% more infectious than the original delta strain, then this is a small increase. In comparison, the delta strain is 100% (twice) more infectious compared to the Null Wuhan strain, ”he said.
Virologist Chepurnov agreed with him. According to him, many mutations of the coronavirus circulate in the world, which also have a high contagiousness, like the “delta”.
“Other already known strains were also announced as more terrible and dangerous, but in the end one came, which did not allow them to gain a foothold in the human population. If there were no “delta”, for example, the British would have been founded – Wuhan would definitely not have become the only one. In this case, it is not yet known what this option is and what advantages it has, so it is too early to make predictions, ”added the virologist.
At the same time, if the new version of AY.4.2, provided that it is not more lethal, still manages to gain a foothold and displace the “delta”, this could lead to the end of the pandemic.
“Even if the strain is more infectious than all existing ones, but does not cause serious consequences, it will be able to take its place in the morbidity structure and annually provide a certain number of cases, but will not dominate over other groups of acute respiratory infections,” – explained the epidemiologist Shunkov.
