After the Covid-19 variants detected in the United Kingdom and South Africa, a third variant was reportedly detected in Japan in four individuals returning from a stay in Brazil.
The Japanese Ministry of Health has just announced that it has isolated a new variant of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 after examining four travelers who arrived in the country from the state of Amazonas, Brazil (their nationalities are unknown). All of them tested positive while in quarantine at Haneda Airport, Tokyo.
Of these four people, three had symptoms. One, a man in his 40s, had just been hospitalized after developing breathing difficulties, Bloomberg reports, while a woman in her 30s complained of headaches and sore throats. The third patient with symptoms is a teenager who is suffering from fever.
According to the Japanese authorities, this new variant belongs to strain B.1.1.248, and contains dozen mutations . One of them is also present in the variants identified in the United Kingdom and South Africa, the potential for transmission of which is a cause for concern.
Takaji Wakita, director of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases (NIID) in Japan, notes however that he is not in a position, for the moment, to comment on any contagiousness more virulent, or even on the severity of the symptoms for which this new strain could be responsible. Work is currently underway to try to determine this.
It is also impossible for the moment to know if the vaccines currently on the market are effective on this third variant isolated in Japan. Again, analyzes are underway to try to determine this.
As for British and South African variants, the news is however reassuring (for the moment. According to the preliminary results of a study published this week by a team of scientists from Pfizer and the University of Texas Medical Branch, the Pfizer vaccine would indeed still be as effective.
As part of this work, the researchers collected blood samples from people who had been vaccinated and tested them against strains of the virus carrying the N501Y mutation, observed in variants first found in the UK and South Africa. Scientists feared that this mutation would change the structure of the virus enough to allow it to "evade" detection by the immune system.
In these tests, the blood of these patients was again found to be able to neutralize the N501Y strain of the virus, being just as effective as against other variants . The team also tested other mutations seen in the UK or South Africa and found similar results. In contrast, no research has yet been done on another puzzling mutation seen in the South African variant, called E484K.In other words, these results are encouraging, but more work remains to be done. ensure.
