Currents News Staff
Two new variants of the coronavirus seem to make the virus more easily spread.
One, first identified in Britain, has already been discovered in the U.S.
While doctors worried it might have mutated enough to evade vaccine protection, the evidence now suggests it has not.
However, the jury’s still out on the second new variant first seen in South Africa.
However, the jury’s still out on the second new variant first seen in South Africa.
“This strain is not any more severe to our knowledge than the other strains of coronavirus,” Dr. Robert Tiballi, an infectious disease expert with the Catholic Medical Association, told Currents News.
He says the spike protein is the structure the virus uses to attach to human cells, “which does have a bit of a change on the spike protein,” he added. “If viruses spontaneously mutate even further and change that spike protein further, it’s possible it may become non-infectious to humans.”
Over the next few weeks virologists will be studying to see how much of a match there is between this new variant found in South Africa and current vaccines which target the spike protein.
Dr. Tiballi says there’s also a new vaccine — Novavax — which is starting trials in the U.S.
“This one is very exciting because it doesn’t have any of the Catholic ethical dilemmas of association with aborted fetal cells and so this may become available in the next couple of months here in the United States,” he said.