Thursday, May 6, 2021

India's SARS-CoV-2 Variant

    I wanted to write another post about India’s COVID-19 surge, but more specifically about the variant that is causing the surge to occur. The variant that is currently dominating the country is the B.1.617 version of COVID-19, which has multiple sequence changes from the older SARS-CoV-2 virus. This variant was first identified in Maharashtra (a state in India) back in October of 2020. Two of the main mutations are in the spike proteins of the virus, at the locations E484Q and L452R, however, there are a total of 13-17 mutations from the original virus. 

The mutations are interesting to look into- while there are about 13-17 mutations estimated in total, there are three main mutations in the spike proteins that are of the most interest. One of them is E484Q, which allows the virus to bind more tightly to the human ACE2 receptor. One of them is L452R, which confers a weaker recognition capability of the host immune system and similar to the E484Q mutation, allows for a stronger binding to the ACE2 receptor. Finally, the P681R mutation that may boost cell-level infectivity of the virus by allowing for easier conversion of the S precursor protein to the active S1/S2 configuration. However, all of these mutations are still under review and being actively researched, but these are the preliminary findings I was able to locate. 

At this point, the variant is being found in many countries outside of India- the U.K., the U.S., and more- in fact, 18 countries in total and on every continent besides Africa. I wonder what this means in terms of our journey to eradicate COVID-19. Luckily, cases in the U.S. have fallen as a result of widespread vaccination, but given that the vaccines may not be effective at protecting against the Indian variant, will we experience yet another surge in COVID cases as variants begin to circulate the globe? Can new vaccines or boosters be developed that protect against variant forms of COVID-19? Perhaps our fight against COVID-19 is not close to over, perhaps it’s far from over…

-Komal Kumar, 4/25/21

2 comments:

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