Treatments called monoclonal antibodies, which are designed specifically to combat the virus, also still work against the alpha variant.īeta variant (B.1.351, B.1.351.2, B.1.351.3) However, the alpha variant is susceptible to available vaccines, according to the CDC. in December 2020 and was the dominant viral strain in America until early June this year.Ĭompared to the original Wuhan strain, the alpha variant is about 50% more contagious and led to an increase in hospitalizations and deaths in the U.K. It spread in Europe before arriving in the U.S. and thought to have emerged in September 2020. The alpha variant was first identified in the U.K. So far none of these mutations have changed the virus enough to undercut the vaccines. It's also what monoclonal antibody treatments latch on to so the virus can't get into your cells, effectively "neutralizing" the threat. And that's a potential concern because the spike protein from the original version of the virus is what scientists used to design all three authorized vaccines. The current VOCs all have mutations in the virus's spike protein, which acts as a key to break into cells to infect them. Right now, there are only a handful of concerning COVID-19 variants.
Experts are constantly working to figure out which variants we should focus on and how they change how we combat COVID-19. Thousands of variants exist around the world, but most of them do not change the way the virus acts. Todd Ellerin, ABC News medical contributor and Director of Infectious Diseases at South Shore Health. Because there's been uncontrolled replication around the world for the last year and a half, we've created variants beyond variants," said Dr. "We're not just dealing with one virus, we're dealing with a lot of viruses. Just recently, for example, the WHO named a new variant called "mu" because it is spreading in some countries, but the CDC has not designated this variant because it is not considered a threat in the U.S. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the CDC are monitoring slightly different variants depending on whether the variant is a threat globally, or just in the United States.
Simone Wildes, a board-certified infectious disease physician and public health expert at South Shore Health in Weymouth, Massachusetts. Jacob John, who studies viruses at the Christian Medical College at Vellore in southern India."Viruses mutate they change their form all the time," said ABC News medical contributor, Dr. It’s not clear yet whether the variant makes people sicker since more data needs to be collected, said Dr. In the U.S., it represents 20% of infections, and health officials say it could become the country’s dominant type as well. In the United Kingdom, the variant is now responsible for 90% of all new infections. But there is a worry that some variants might evolve enough to be more contagious, cause more severe illness or evade the protection that vaccines provide.Įxperts say the delta variant spreads more easily because of mutations that make it better at latching onto cells in our bodies. Viruses constantly mutate, and most changes aren’t concerning. It got its name from the World Health Organization, which names notable variants after letters of the Greek alphabet. It’s a version of the coronavirus that has been found in more than 80 countries since it was first detected in India. What should I know about the delta variant?
0 kommentar(er)
