New Coranavirus Strain Found In South Africa

 This post is taken from IZULAT blog repost here

Aside from the United Kingdom discovered a new strain of COVID-19 or coronavirus in South Africa another new variant or strain was discovered called “501.V2” or “501.V2 Variant”

According to the news, this South African variant of the coronavirus is more transmissible and spreading faster than the former or old strain and have similar mutation with the United Kingdom’s discovered new variant which is “N501Y”.

““The ’South African’ variant is distinct from the UK variant, but both contain an unusually high number of mutations compared to other SARS-CoV-2 lineages.  Some of these mutations change the S protein, which is cause for concern.  Both contain the N501Y mutation but so do many other variants that do not appear to have increased transmission, so the picture is complex. “(Science Media Centre)

““The South African variant ‘501.V2’ is characterised by N501Y, E484K and K417N mutations in the S protein – so it shares the N501Y mutation with the UK variant, but the other two mutations are not found in the UK variant.  Similarly, the South African variant does not contain the 69-70del mutation that is found in the UK variant.”(Science Media Centre)

““The South African virus variant was recently reported in a preprint¹ ahead of formal publication.  The variant has multiple spike mutations and emerged in a major metropolitan area in South Africa following the first wave of the epidemic and then spread to multiple locations within two other neighbouring provinces.  It has rapidly spread become the dominant virus variant in the Eastern and Western Cape provinces.  The variant has 3 mutations at key sites in the receptor binding domain (K417N, E484K and N501Y) of the spike gene.  Two of these (E484K and N501Y) are within the receptor-binding motif (RBM), the main functional motif that forms the interface with the human ACE2 receptor.  The N501Y mutation is the same as that found in the UK virus variant.  What these changes mean for the infectiousness of the variant virus (transmissibility) and its impact on disease severity remain unknown.”(Science Media Centre)

“The UK and South African virus variants have changes in the spike gene consistent with the possibility that they are more infectious.”(Science Media Centre)

The Main  Point : New variant of coronavirus strain was found on South Africa called 501.V2 which is believe to more transmissible and spreading faster as the news said