Scientists are warning that the uncontrolled coronavirus outbreak in Brazil could threaten the global fight to end the pandemic.
The most infectious and nullifying P1 variant of the vaccine that emerged there has already become dominant in most states in the country and there are no signs that it is decreasing.
“This information is an atomic bomb,” said Dr. Roberto Kraenkel, a biological mathematician at Brazil’s Covid-19 Observatory, to the Washington Post.
‘I am surprised at the levels [of variants] found. The media is not understanding what this means. All the worrying variants are more transmissible … and that means an accelerated phase of the epidemic. A disaster.’
The variant has already been identified as the cause of 15 cases in nine US states.
Fortunately, rising vaccination rates and declining daily infections in the United States are helping to stem its outbreak – but this is not the case in Brazil, where ICUs are fluctuating at the limit of their full capacity, while the chaotic release of the vaccine struggle to gain ground.
“No country will be safe if not all countries control their outbreaks,” said Dr. Denise Garret, vice president of applied epidemiology at the Sabin Vaccine Institute in Washington state, to DailyMail.com.
The coronavirus is spreading ‘uncontrollably’ in Brazil, giving rise to a more infectious variant, which kills the vaccine, known as P1, which has spread to at least 20 countries (pink). As long as the outbreak persists in South America, the rest of the world could still be vulnerable to new mutants, experts warn.
In the USA, the P1 variant has not yet spread, but if it does, it has the potential to reinfect hundreds of millions of people who have not been vaccinated – even if they have had COVID-19 before. Only one new case was detected this month, but it is likely to change
‘We can vaccinate as much as we want in the United States and obtain collective immunity, but as long as we have uncontrollable outbreaks in other countries, the borders are still open.
‘In countries like Brazil where there are no restrictions and the virus is loose, it is really a breeding ground for variants’
All viruses mutate, all the time.
Much like cancer, the more they spread and make copies of themselves, the more they mutate – and the more significant these mutations tend to become.
SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, actually took a long time to start undergoing significant mutations.
But variants began to emerge around the world in late 2020, as the rise in cases in most countries gave the virus ample opportunities to mutate.
And the way it played out in Brazil was particularly conducive to dangerous variants.
The country had already gone through horrible initial waves. The antibody tests suggested that about 76 percent of the hard-hit city of Manaus was infected in October, after the first wave of the pandemic there.
This should have given three-quarters of the Amazon city natural immunity to reinfection.
P1 has been detected in at least nine U.S. states, but this is widely considered to be an under count due to the sparse genomic sequencing used to find variants
This did not happened.
Manaus was hit by a second wave of infections in January. The devastation reached a new peak, with 100 people dying a day in the city of two million.
The IP variant was discovered there in December and probably fueled the high rate of infections and, even worse, reinfections seen in the city.
Laboratory studies, as well as real-world data, suggest that mutations in a location known as E484K help the variant to avoid antibodies triggered by previous infection with older variants or vaccines designed to protect them.
‘Immune pressure’ encourages this type of mutation.
When viruses are confronted with immunity that prevents them from hijacking cellular machinery to copy themselves, only strains that have mutations that make them less affected by vaccines survive.
And then they thrive.
“This new strain is escaping immunity and starts all over again and is now the predominant strain in Brazil,” said Dr. Garrett.
Regarding the cases of the P1 variant in the United States, she said: ‘They are apparently low, but make no mistake, this variant is more transmissible’ and is probably more widespread than the captured tests.
The good news, notes Dr. Garrett, is that vaccines appear to work against the Brazilian variant, as opposed to initial warnings.
The natural immunity from previous infection seems less resilient against the variant challenge.
And with only 10 percent of Americans fully vaccinated, hundreds of millions of Americans – including the 29 million who have had COVID-19 – may still be vulnerable to the P1 form of the virus.
‘It is only a matter of time if there are no control measures. On here [in the U.S.] the good news is that we are vaccinating, and we are vaccinating fast, because we need to vaccinate as many people as soon as possible to try to control this and so far, it seems that these variants are not escaping the vaccine, at least not for serious illnesses and hospitalizations ”Said Dr. Garret.
“But there is no guarantee. The virus is evolving fast and … if it continues to evolve in other countries, it could eventually be here.
“What happens in other countries has a real effect in other countries.”
This, she says, is the strongest argument for equitable distribution of vaccines worldwide.
“I understand the nationalism of vaccines – countries want to vaccinate their populations first – but if there is no equitable distribution, there will always be a threat, as long as your countries where the outbreak is still occurring, there will always be a threat to the world.”