The mutation, identified in a variant first seen in South Africa and separately seen in another variant in Brazil , changes a part of the virus that your immune system’s antibodies get trained to recognize after you’ve been infected or vaccinated. Lab studies show that the change could make people’s antibodies less effective at neutralizing the virus. The mutation seems to help the virus disguise part of its signature appearance, so the pathogen might have an easier time slipping past immune protection.
It’s not that the mutation will render existing vaccines useless, scientists stress. The vaccines authorized so far and those in development produce what’s called a polyclonal response, generating numerous antibodies that home in on different parts of the virus. Changes to any of those target sites raise the possibility that the vaccines would be less effective, not that they won’t work at all.“With one mutation or even three mutations, it’s expected the antibodies will still recognize this variant, though they might not recognize it as well as other variants,” said Ramón Lorenzo-Redondo, a molecular virologist at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.
Essentially, the mutation is getting attention because it appears more likely to have some effect on vaccines than other mutations that have emerged, though scientists are still trying to test that hypothesis. The more contagious variant raising global alarms, which was first seen in the United Kingdom and is referred to as B.1.1.7, is not thought to have mutations that will greatly affect vaccines, the evidence so far indicates.
But Bloom added that he believed the virus would have to pick up multiple mutations — and particular mutations in specific spots, not just any alterations — to have a serious effect on vaccine efficacy, which will likely take some time.
“I’m quite optimistic that even with these mutations, immunity is not going to suddenly fail on us,” Bloom said. “It might be gradually eroded, but it’s not going to fail on us, at least in the short term.”
Scientists do think the coronavirus could eventually change so much that the immunity provided by vaccines will be threatened, a process that will pick up as the number of people protected from the virus — either through vaccination or infection — grows and evolutionary pressure in turn increases. But they still anticipate it could take years, and that when it does occur, vaccine makers can tweak their designs to match the newer variant, a process some companies have said would only take weeks .
The SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which causes Covid-19, has been mutating as it spreads, just like other viruses. Many of the mutations do nothing, and some might even impede the virus’s quest to replicate and spread. But every so often, a random mutation gives the virus an evolutionary advantage, and that variant can then become dominant. Early on in the pandemic, a mutation known as D614G helped the coronavirus spread more easily, and variants with that mutation quickly overtook others globally.
B.1.1.7, which has since spread to other parts of the world, appears to be even more infectious, with some estimates saying it’s 50% more transmissible. One of its mutations, called N501Y, improves how well the virus’ spike protein can attach to a receptor called ACE2 on human cells, making it more likely for the virus to successfully infect cells and for the virus to pass from person to person.
The same N501Y mutation is also present in the variant identified in South Africa, though the two variants evolved independently. (Public health authorities are trying to steer people away from using terms like the “U.K. variant” or “South African variant,” just as they discourage people from tying SARS-2 by name to China or Wuhan. “We need to use the names appropriately because we don’t want to stigmatize where these variants have been identified,” the World Health Organization’s Maria Van Kerkhove said Tuesday. “That’s true for any virus that’s identified.”)
Can I get Covid again?
Yes, You Can Get COVID-19 Again: What to Know.
- Researchers have found that a man contracted the new coronavirus a second time months after his original illness.
- The case suggests reinfection can occur a few months after recovering from an initial bout of COVID-19.
- However, it appears his immune system protected the man from serious symptoms.
All data and statistics are based on publicly available data at the time of publication. Some information may be out of date.
A 33-year-old man in Hong Kong contracted the new coronavirus a second time just 4 1/2 months after recovering from his first infection.
Though anecdotal stories about potential reinfection have recently been circulating, this is the first documented case of reinfection with the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, that causes COVID-19.
Researchers from the University of Hong Kong sequenced the virus and determined that the virus behind the man’s first infection was a different variant than what triggered the second infection.
The case suggests reinfection can occur a few months after recovering from an initial bout of COVID-19.
Health experts agree, though, that much more research is needed to determine how common reinfections could be.
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