"We believe it's another escape mechanism the virus is creating to evade the response of antibodies," said Felipe Naveca, one of the authors of the study and part of Fiocruz in the Amazon city of Manaus, where the P1 variant is believed to have originated. Studies have shown the P1 variant to be as much as 2.5 times more contagious than the original coronavirus and more resistant to antibodies. For Ester Sabino, a scientist at the faculty of medicine of the University of Sao Paulo who led the first genome sequencing of the coronavirus in Brazil, the mutations of the P1 variant are not surprising given the fast pace of transmission. "If you have a high level of transmission, like you have in Brazil at the moment, your risk of new mutations and variants increases," she said. So far vaccines, such as those developed by AstraZeneca and China's Sinovac, have proven effective against the Brazilian variant but Sabino said further mutations could put that at risk.

Source: bd News24 April 14, 2021 14:15 UTC