Ravi Gupta: "The coronavirus mutations will perhaps take another year or two to recover"

Pfizer vaccine manufacturing process in Frankfurt in January 2021 BionTech / Reuters

The so-called British, South African and Brazilian variants of the coronavirus have raised doubts, fears and concerns around the world.

"More contagious", "more resistant to vaccines" and "more deadly": each new discovery by scientists about potential risks and each adjective in the press about new versions of SARS-CoV-2 has diluted the hope that had been won since the end of last year with the arrival of vaccines to deal with the pandemic.

The truth is that viruses mutate all the time and that only a handful of changes in their genetic material are under the scrutiny of specialists and health authorities.

One of them, E484K (also called Erik by geneticists), present in samples of the three best-known variants, has set off alarms in Mexico after it was found in the last two weeks in five people infected with covid-19 : four cases in the State of Jalisco and one in San Luis Potosí.

While the Mexican Government rushes the epidemiological investigations, EL PAÍS has sought out Ravi Gupta, professor of Clinical Microbiology at the University of Cambridge and one of the researchers who is leading the efforts to find out more about this mutation, to clear up many of the concerns and the fears that have arisen in recent days.

"I think we will be fine," says Gupta and assures that there are still no reasons for people in Mexico to be "much more concerned than before," especially since the cases detected with this mutation are still very few.

The prognosis is more bleak when the epidemic is spoken of as a global crisis.

"There is no doubt that the new variants will make the global response to the pandemic more difficult," he says.

"Perhaps the mutations will take us another year or two to recover," he warns, "the good news is that vaccines have been manufactured and the most important point is that they continue to have access to those vaccines."

The eyes of the bulk of researchers are on spike protein, which is what allows the coronavirus to penetrate and invade the cells of our body.

The spike protein is also the target of the vaccines that have been developed, because it is intended that our immune system can detect and act against this "threat".

Gupta explains that E484K is precisely a mutation in the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2.

"It is in a critical place for the interaction between this protein and the receptors of our cells," he says by phone, "this change or mutation, which we are seeing in new viruses such as those found in Brazil or South Africa, can affect the response of our antibodies and that is what worries many people ”.

The Brazilian or South African variants have several mutations compared to the “original” version of the virus, but E484K is classified as an escape mutation because by more easily bypassing our body's defenses it is likely to cause a more severe version of the disease .

Changes in the spike protein can also make vaccines less effective, Gupta says.

"Mutations can allow the virus to continue infecting us and other people," says the virologist, recently included in

Time

magazine's list of the

100 most influential people of the year for achieving a cure for a patient with HIV.

The so-called London patient is only the second person in the world to get over it.

A sample button of Gupta's arguments is the case of AstraZeneca in South Africa.

The country suspended the application of that vaccine this week after a study showed low efficacy against the predominant variant there, which is 50% more contagious according to the latest data, especially in mild cases.

The drugmaker said it will invest to develop a new prototype, likely to be available by the end of the year.

More time and money.

The information available - and this is one of the recurring nuances of the scientist during the conversation - is not enough to say that the vaccine is useless or that other vaccines with similar technology, such as Sputnik V, have these problems.

You have to test case by case, vaccine by vaccine.

“A vaccine may not stop the infections, but it may be useful to prevent people from dying.

I think many have forgotten that in the end the most important thing is to protect people's lives, ”he says.

Due to recent findings on transmissibility and the immune response, if countries see more and more cases with this change in the genetic material of the virus, it is necessary for health authorities to be alert, he adds.

The American continent, which concentrates the largest number of new cases in the world, is one of the areas of interest in the field of mutations because "if infections are not controlled, new variants are likely to emerge."

In his opinion, the travel restrictions that the United Kingdom has imposed on its residents, for example, are a good way to react, although he acknowledges that they are not sustainable for long.

It suggests increasing the application of tests and strengthening the detection of infections.

The best way to protect yourself, he says, is social distancing and speeding up the application of vaccines.

"Vaccines need to be given a boost," he insists, "it is necessary for countries to invest more, to spend more money on this."

Most of the genetic sequences of the different versions of the virus have been published in the UK.

It is, without a doubt, the country that has done the most research, while the rest of the world has only just begun to join the effort.

Thanks to that, variants such as the Japanese one and some in the United States have been known in recent weeks.

The fact of including the gentilices in the colloquial names of the variants has been controversial, with questions that it may even be offensive.

Gupta does not share this opinion because technical names, such as B.1.1.7 in the case of the British variant, can be too confusing.

“If the public cannot understand what we are talking about, we run the risk that they will not be able to follow the recommendations;

using scientific jargon and words that are not understood is the easiest way to have this problem, ”he says, although he says it is important for people to understand that these adjectives only mean that it was discovered there.

"Communication is important to end scaremongering," he recommends, "it seems that variants will dominate the conversation in the coming months."

"Not everything is negative," says Gupta, "in a way it is positive if it helps people to take everything more seriously."

E484K has been mistakenly called the "Mexican mutation" in some local media.

Precisely, what the authorities are trying to determine is how a mutation arose that is usually seen in the South African and Brazilian variant in cases that, as far as is known, did not travel abroad.

One hypothesis, says Gupta, is that "since many of us have been infected, it is likely that the virus is capable of mutating to continue infecting more people."

In any case, five cases are not enough to talk about a new variant.

"If a virus is found that is identified for the first time there and that has many mutations, we can already speak of a variant", clarifies the researcher, "not just one mutation is enough, a few are needed to show that it has evolved from one specific way: there are many mutations happening in many parts of the world ”.

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