Not only the British variant of the Corona B117 virus to be aware of, it turns out that there are other variants to watch out for. Scientist describe this variant as the ‘king variant’, Corona B1351 found in South Africa (South Africa).
According to molecular genomics researcher and member of the Covid-19 Genomics UK Consortium Riza Arief Putranto, the South African variant of Corona, even recently the cases have increased in the Philippines, exceeding 50 cases.
“B1351 is the king’s variant for genomic or virological research,” he said in an online discussion on CISDI, Saturday (6/3/2021).
A series of facts about Corona B1351:
1.There are reports of reinfection
The Corona B1351 variant, which was first discovered last October. It has spread to many countries including Asia such as the Philippines. The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said there is a possibility that reinfection occurs due to this variant.
In a study in South Africa, this virus (new variant of Corona B1351) infect 2 percent of people.
2. In the list of WHO Concern
Corona B1351 including variants of concern to the World Health Organization (WHO), called variants of concern (VOC). The reason is, probably VOCs will have an impact on increasing transmission. In order to trigger severe infection and the efficacy of the Corona vaccine.
Apart from Corona B1351, the variants that are under WHO’s attention are B117 and P1 or 501Y.V3, which is the Corona variant that was first reported by Japanese health authorities to four people from Brazil.
3.It has an impact on the efficacy of the Corona vaccine
The Corona B1351 variant has been shown to reduce the efficacy of the corona vaccine. As happened with the Corona Novavax vaccine, efficacy fell from 96 percent to 60 percent.
“Because it is a variant that accumulates a lot of mutations and allows antibodies to escape and has been proven in the world,” said Riza.
“Some vaccines in the world have decreased efficacy against this variant, although the B117 variant is still relatively better,” said Riza.
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