Definitely, SARS-CoV-2 likes to play with our nerves.
As the start of the vaccination campaign in France approaches, scheduled for Sunday, December 27, a new variant of the Covid-19 virus, this one from South Africa, worries the researchers: it is suspected of causing severe forms in young adults.
It is called "501.V2", nothing to do with its English colleague "B.1.1.7", detected on September 20 in the county of Kent and of which a first case has just been identified in Germany in a traveler who arrived from London, as well as two British tourists in Switzerland.
Nothing to see?
Though…
If the South African “501.V2” raises questions, it is because it is rather the conqueror type.
"We had never seen a single line dominate like this," or "spread so quickly," explained South African scientist Tulio de Oliveira from the University of KwaZulu-Natal recently.
Two months is enough for it to supplant all the other strains in circulation.
In mid-November, it was already found in 80% to 90% of the samples taken.
A variant more transmissible than the English?
A British study published Thursday, December 24, establishes that the English variant "could be 50% to 74%" more contagious compared to the strains which were in circulation, according to the preliminary data available ", which would explain the increase of the cases noted in the south-eastern England.
But for British researchers from LSHTM (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine), no evidence has yet been found to suggest "that people who contract it have an increased risk of hospitalization or death".
For the South African strain, this remains unclear.
"Today nothing shows that the 501.V2 is more transmissible than the British variant," thunders Minister of Health Zwelini Mkhize, furious that his British counterpart has said otherwise.
Except that this South African variant, shares one of its different mutations with the English virus, "the N 501 Y", identical to the British.
However, according to the researchers, this poses a question: it is likely to facilitate the penetration of the virus into cells.
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The most affected country in Europe, with Italy, with more than 67,000 deaths linked to Covid-19, the United Kingdom could well put itself under cover.
This is also what the authors of the British study recommend.
At the rate at which the English mutant virus is spreading, "it could represent 90% of cases in mid-January and" without rapid measures all parts of the UK could be affected, they warn, with a number of hospitalizations and deaths throughout the country higher in 2021 than in 2020 ”, without being more virulent.
Will the Covid-19 end up looking like the flu?
So far, the Covid-19 virus has been relatively stable, but if it continues to multiply the small changes (17 all the same noted on the English strain), will we have to change the vaccines?
This is THE question all researchers ask themselves.
The influenza virus is known to be a champion of mutations, constantly reorganizing itself, and scientists hope that SARS-CoV-2 will not take the path… For Andrew Preston, specialist in microbial pathogenesis at the University of Bath in England, "it seems that we are entering a particularly dangerous phase of this pandemic, which makes the deployment of vaccines even more urgent".
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Already, faced with this worrying series of mutant viruses, the authorities in Hong Kong, in the middle of the fourth wave, with more than 200 new cases of Covid-19 per day, have already taken the lead.
No question of compromising the vaccination which will begin in January.
Travelers from South Africa can no longer enter its territory and, as of December 25, all others (except those coming from China, Taiwan and Macao) will have to remain in isolation for three weeks and no longer two and this quarantine will necessarily take place in ad hoc hotels.
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