There are five variants of the new coronavirus identified in Italy.
To define real mutations, more statistical data is needed, but at the moment it can be said that not only is the virus no less aggressive than it was at the beginning of the year, but that thanks to the new variants it is able to replicate itself. more effectively.
This is what emerges from the data so far available to the coronavirus Task force active at the Ceinge advanced biotechnology center in Naples, funded by the Campania Region.
"From the data available so far, based on 246 genomes sequenced from patients with Covid-19, it emerges that there are five variants of the virus", geneticist Massimo Zollo, from the Federico II University of Naples, scientific director, told ANSA of the Covid task force active at the Ceinge advanced biotechnology center and financed by the Campania Region.
"We know that the variants, identified with the abbreviations 19A, 19B, 20A, 20B and 20C, are present throughout Italy, but now it is a question of understanding what their impact is in the regions".
After the lockdown, the most frequent are 20A and 20B. Many sequences have so far been produced in Lombardy, and it has emerged that in Campania the variants 20A and 20B are present in the same quantity.
Data are also arriving from Abruzzo, Lazio and Puglia, but to understand if the five variants are circulating throughout Italy there is still a lot of work to be done: "We have to continue typing the virus throughout the country, to understand if there are any particular realities at the regional level, or if it is a trend that is happening throughout Italy ", said Zollo.
This trend is also present in Europe, in countries such as Spain, Germany, and the United Kingdom, with a prevalence of some variants over others.
Certainly, the expert noted, "the SarsCoV2 virus is as bad as it was last March, and the new variants would seem to make it even more aggressive. They are mutations distributed throughout the genome, but at the moment it is noted that mutations they do not affect the interaction between the Spike protein and the Ace receptor ", that is, between the protein which is the main pick with which the virus is able to penetrate into the cells and the receptor which constitutes the molecular lock used by the protein.
"What it is possible to say at the moment - according to Zollo - is that from a statistical point of view, the more the number of people with the infection increases, the more likely new mutations are: at the moment it is only one statistical probability ".
Meanwhile, other mutations are also being observed, such as that of the Orf 3A gene, which regulates the inflammatory response in cells, and those of the Nsp2 and Nsp6 genes (non-structural proteins of the virus) in Orf1a: the first promotes cellular metabolism with the functionality of the virus in cells;
the second promotes the formation of vesicles that the virus uses to replicate.
"All this, however, is not sufficient to say that the SarsCoV2 virus has mutated", said Zollo.
"At the moment we see differences between the sequences of the virus in 5 isotypes, but to reach conclusions it is essential to have more sequences. Until then - he concluded - it cannot be excluded that they may only be variants, perhaps the result of imports from other countries ".