Fernando González Candelas
Professor of Genetics at the University of Valencia and researcher at the mixed unit Infection and Public Health FISABIO/Universitat de Valencia
What is known about this new variant?
It is a variant that appears linked to an outbreak in an area where there was very little virus circulation and with a large unvaccinated population. This variant immediately seems to be growing disproportionately, especially because, being associated with an outbreak, almost all positive cases are related to it and its relative frequency is immediately very high. This apparently makes its growth rate spectacular. On the other hand, and this should not be forgotten, it is true that it has many more mutations than the variants we have seen so far. In the S protein alone, in the spicule, there are already 32 mutations with respect to the original Wuhan virus. Many of these mutations in the spicule, moreover, have been seen in variants of concern and variants of interest previously, but this is the first one that, let's put it this way, brings many, many of them together in a single genome. What is not yet clear, and it will take time to know with reliable and trustworthy data, is whether the accumulation of all these mutations really has the effect of increasing transmissibility, the possible escape to vaccine immunity or to that of the previous infection, or whether it is more virulent and has a worse progress in infected persons. We don't have any data on all that and all we can do at the moment is speculate about it.
Does it deserve special attention in your opinion?
Yes, it deserves attention, but just that: attention. We have to see what happens with it in other environments, and what happens if it reaches other countries. For that we have to be vigilant, but it is one thing to be vigilant and another thing to alarm. It does not seem that the situation requires an alarm, but a similar vigilance to that which was previously carried out with the rest of the variants. Vaccines continue to have the high effectiveness they have. We have seen that over time the effectiveness of the vaccines decreases, hence the booster doses, and it is not expected that this variant will be any different.
In the light of what is known, could it affect the effectiveness of the vaccines?
With what we know, we have no evidence that it could affect it. We know that it has some mutations that decrease the neutralizing capacity of specific antibodies, but vaccines trigger the production not of a single antibody, but of many antibodies (possibly dozens of them). It does not appear that this virus has the ability to simultaneously evade all the antibodies that are produced when a person is vaccinated. Decrease, yes, but not such that we have to think that there will be an increase in persons infected with this variant despite being vaccinated, and getting critically ill. We should be vigilant to take the necessary measures if this occurs, such as revaccination or make a new vaccine formulation to correct this undesirable deviation.