In Guadeloupe, the health authorities are sounding the alarm.
In the space of a few days, the Regional Health Agency noted some worrying signals about the epidemic situation on the island.
The incidence rate, first of all, is on the rise and now reaches 90.7 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.
In four days, the number of hospitalized patients rose from 23 to 27 on Saturday, including 9 patients admitted to intensive care units.
A man under the age of 55 recently died, bringing the death toll on the island to 158 since the start of the health crisis.
What push the local ARS to multiply calls for caution by using different communication campaigns, to adopt the "covid-attitude".
[#CovidAttitude #CKS] 👊🏾🟡
Do not become a contact case.
Like the Comik Kreyol Show, respect barrier gestures
The virus is actively circulating on our territory, let's protect ourselves and our loved ones by maintaining our mobilization.
Let's adapt the #COVIDATTITUDE 👊🏾 pic.twitter.com/4U7b3xv7Nt
- ARS GUADELOUPE (@ars_guadeloupe) February 24, 2021
These concerns are above all linked to the presence of the English variant in Guadeloupe.
Some 50 cases of British variant contamination were detected in a single day on Saturday.
But while carrying out their analyzes, scientists discovered the presence of a new threat.
"Another variant has been detected and is being analyzed to determine its exact type," said ARS Guadeloupe in a statement released on Saturday.
Contacted this Sunday, ARS Guadeloupe and the prefecture did not respond to our requests.
Two different studies in New York
The fears seem even more serious and concrete in the United States.
In New York, scientists are working on the appearance of a possible new variant, which is already circulating quite strongly in the city.
Two studies have been put online concerning this variant, called B.1.526.
But they have yet to be peer reviewed.
They have not been published in scientific journals.
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These two studies are based on different working methods.
The authors of the first study, researchers at Caltech worked on the gigantic database called Gisaid, on which researchers publish the genetic mutations of the virus that they find around the world.
The authors of the studies on the New York variant eventually noticed two mutations that repeated in the New York area.
The first, E484K, has been observed in particular in South Africa and Brazil.
The second, S477N, is able to change the way the virus attaches to human cells.
“When several mutations occur on the RNA of the virus, we then speak of a variant,” explains Parisian Antoine Flahault, director of the Institute for Global Health and professor at the Faculty of Medicine in Geneva.
The N501Y.V1 (called the British variant) has almost 20, the 501.V2 (South African) 23. ”It is difficult to know at this stage how many mutations this“ New York ”variant B.1.526 would contain.
The second study, conducted by researchers at Columbia University, is based on patients at the university's medical center, a sample of 1,142 people.
They calculated that 12% of the contaminations concerned the variant containing the E484K mutation.
“We have found cases in Westchester, the Bronx and Queens, lower Manhattan and Brooklyn.
So it seems to be widespread, it's not just a cluster, ”Dr. David Ho, director of the Aaron Diamond Center for AIDS Research at Columbia University and co-lead of the study, told The New York Times. .
Increased resistance to vaccines?
The discovery of this variant, containing the E484K mutation already discovered in South Africa and Brazil, is not really good news.
The ability of this mutation to take hold all over the world is testimony to the fact that it enjoys a comparative advantage over other variants.
Scientists fear that this mutation is more resistant to vaccines than the so-called original form of the virus.
Studies have yet to determine precisely the consequences of this mutation.
But a case of reinfection by a variant carrying the E484K mutation has already been the subject of research, at the beginning of January.
But opinions still differ somewhat on the risks involved.
"People who have recovered from the coronavirus or who have been vaccinated are likely to be able to fight this variant, there is no doubt about it," Professor Nussenzweig, an immunologist at Rockefeller University, told The New York Times, for example.
But "they can be a little sick of it".
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What is certain is that the arrival of these new variants does not come as a surprise. “It is expected that others may emerge as the epidemic continues to develop and the virus replication is running at full speed in human cells,” confirms Antoine Flahault. In addition, the original strains begin to have more difficulty in developing, due to the natural and vaccine immunity directed against them. It is even probable that very many variants went under the radar, quite simply because they did not benefit from any advantage. "A variant which would not be more contagious would have no selective advantage and would not propagate or not for a long time," continues Antoine Flahault. There are surely many that have never been detected because they are very minor ”.