SAN ANTONIO – As the first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine arrived in San Antonio, a new variant of Coronavirus was being researched and detected in parts of England.
According to Matt Hancock, the U.K.’s health secretary, A new surge of case counts in southern England may be associated with the new variant.
“We’ve currently identified over 1,000 cases with this variant predominantly in the south of England,” Hancock said.
Dr. Tyler Curiel—a medicine, microbiology and immunology professor at UT Health San Antonio—said the variant might make the virus more easily transmissible.
“As far as we know right now, it possibly makes it easier to transmit from person to person, but it doesn’t look like it makes the disease you get any more serious than if you didn’t have this mutation or if you had some different strain,” Curiel said.
Curiel said viruses mutate frequently and that there are at least seven major groups of the Coronavirus.
“Viruses are always looking to find the best way to survive,” Curiel said.
Curiel said the original L-strain of the virus has already undergone a few mutations. The G-strain of the virus being predominantly what researchers and first responders see in patients in the United States.
“The L-strain that originated in China has gone through a couple of mutations and it’s spun off another strain called the S-strain, and that’s spun off a strain called the G-strain,” Curiel said. “The G-strain is the predominant strain now in the United States and Europe. And so in England, what they’re finding now is in the G-strain, there are slightly different mutations within.”
Even with this breakthrough in research, Curiel says the vaccines, which were just approved to be used on a large scale, should still be effective in slowing the spread of the virus.
“There’s no evidence at all that any vaccine advocacy is going to be compromised. That doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen,” Curiel said. “Tomorrow, we might get new information like a mutation that really is evil or really bad, which hasn’t happened. But if that happens, then we’ll change our thinking, not because we’re wrong or because we’re fools or we’re running around in circles.”
Curiel said researchers like him and policymakers would continue to adjust as they learn more about the virus.
“It’s just because this is a new virus. It’s happening right in front of our eyes,” Curiel said.
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