In South Africa, virologists discover a new variant of the coronavirus: B.1.1.529.
It shows numerous changes in its genetic make-up and appears to be spreading rapidly.
The consequences for the further course of the pandemic cannot currently be foreseen.
Berlin - The corona situation in Germany and many other countries is critical anyway - the number of new infections is increasing, the clinics are full and winter has not even started.
A new variant of the Sars-CoV-2 pathogen is now emerging in South Africa, which worries experts.
Is everything getting worse now?
What is known so far about B.1.1.529?
The variant B.1.1.529, which was first discovered in South Africa, has mutations at several crucial points in the virus.
On the one hand, they concern the spike protein, which the viruses use to dock onto human cells.
The body forms antibodies against the spike protein when it becomes infected with the virus.
Many of the vaccines also stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies against this protein.
In addition, B.1.1.529 has mutations near what is known as the Furin Cleavage Site, a region that plays a role in the uptake of the virus into human cells.
Intermediate forms between the new variant and the variants known from the beginning of 2020 have not yet been observed.
"The variant came unexpectedly and now seems to be spreading rapidly in southern Africa," says Richard Neher, head of the research group Evolution of Viruses and Bacteria at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel (Switzerland).
According to Lothar Wieler, President of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the variant has not yet been proven in Germany.
A first case is known in Belgium, as the Belgian Minister of Health Frank Vandenbroucke announced on Friday.
How big is the concern among experts?
"The thing is armed to the teeth," says Friedemann Weber, head of the Institute for Virology at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen.
The virus brings with it a "huge bunch of mutations", with more than 30 in the spike protein alone.
Some of the mutations found are already known to weaken the effect of antibodies.
However, Weber emphasizes that it is too early to make any statements about the further course of events.
"It is quite conceivable that the variant will disappear again."
Experts agree that the variant definitely deserves special attention.
Based on the mutations found, it is quite conceivable that the variant is both very transferrable and also escapes parts of the immune response, says Neher.
"It does not have any mutations that we do not already know, but we do not yet know the combination of mutations," says Carsten Watzl, Secretary General of the German Society for Immunology (DGfI).
"How this combination works must now be investigated." Statements about the influence of the variant on the course of the disease are currently not possible.
"We just have too few cases for that at the moment."
"We are really very concerned," said RKI boss Wieler on Friday in Berlin.
It still needs to be investigated whether the increasing number of cases in South Africa is really related to this type of virus.
He very much hopes that the spread of the variant will be strictly limited by travel restrictions.
Is there a risk that the vaccinations will no longer work?
"Since the vaccines are efficient against all previous variants, I assume that there is also vaccination protection against this variant," says Neher.
"However, it is quite conceivable that there will be more breakthrough infections, so that a third dose will be all the more important." Immunologist Watzl also does not assume that the vaccination will prove to be useless.
"It may be that the protective effect decreases, but we are not defenseless."
The Mainz vaccine manufacturer Biontech started new investigations in response to the variant becoming known.
The data from ongoing laboratory tests would provide information on whether an adaptation of the vaccine would be necessary if this variant spreads internationally.
You can count on findings in two weeks at the latest.
According to the virologist Weber, the existing antibody therapies in particular could be affected by the new variant.
With this treatment, patients at high risk of a severe course are given an antibody cocktail as soon as possible after infection.
Unlike the vaccines, the antibodies target only a few features of the spike protein on the virus surface.
So they lose their effect if exactly this characteristic changes.
How do variants spread across countries?
Air traffic and travel as a whole are the main routes for viruses to spread. You can get from one country to another, even from one continent to the next, within hours and, once there, start new chains of infection. The restriction of air traffic is therefore one of the measures that can be taken when a virus variant classified as threatening appears - as is now being done with the newly discovered variant. But: "We won't be able to keep the variants out of Europe, but we can gain valuable time to get better data on the virus," says Watzl.
For the time being, the WHO has spoken out against travel restrictions.
Spokesman Christian Lindmeier said in Geneva on Friday that even without such restrictions, states could take a number of measures to curb the spread of new variants.
This included the precise observation of the infection process and the genetic analysis of any corona cases.
According to experts, what should be done now?
The aim must be to avoid the entry of this variant as much as possible, said the Managing Minister of Health Jens Spahn (CDU) on Friday in Berlin.
"That is the last thing we can still need in our current situation, that an additional variant comes into the wave." Spahn asked all people who have come to Germany from South Africa and the region in the past few days to be tested for the virus with a PCR test to be on the safe side.
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In addition to the travel restrictions, research into the virus variant must now be pushed ahead, says DGfI Secretary General Watzl.
Laboratory tests can be used to determine whether the immune response to the new virus type has changed.
The first results can be expected in two to three weeks.
Only later will larger studies in the population reveal whether the variant is more contagious than others and whether it influences the course of the disease.
Is it a coincidence that the variant was found in South Africa?
It is currently uncertain whether the variant originated in South Africa.
It is also conceivable that she came to South Africa from other countries and was only recognized there for the first time.
The Cape State has good virologists who were puzzled when daily infection rates in the country soared from a few hundred cases to more than 2,000 in a matter of days.
The area around the metropolis of Johannesburg and the capital Pretoria is particularly affected.
This “Gauteng Province” is the country's core economic region and accounts for around 80 percent of new infections every day nationwide.
A cluster of cases has been identified on the campus of a university in Pretoria.
dpa
