Scientists made an alarming COVID-19 discovery. They claimed that they found an "escape mutant" in a new variant of the novel coronavirus first identified in South Africa.
The new South African coronavirus variant has no spread to 12 countries. According to CNN's latest report, the researchers said that the new mutation E484K can reduce the current COVID-19 vaccines' efficacy.
Penny Moore, South Africa's National Institute for Communicable Diseases' associate professor, said that the newly found mutation is very alarming.
"We fear this mutation might have an impact, and what we don't know is the extent of the impact," she added via CNN World.
What is COVID-19 escape mutant E484K?
Moore explained that the new mutation is called escape mutant because it has the ability to dodge or escape the vaccine's antibodies.
On the other hand, Alex Signal, a virologist at the Africa Health Research Institute said that she is currently worried about the new mutation.
Although this is the case, Moore, Signal, and other researchers involved in the new study explained that they still need to complete their laboratory work to confirm that vaccines are really less effective against the new COVID-19 variant.
However, the scientists said that the vaccines will not be useless against the new mutation. What they are trying to reiterate is the new variant's ability to decrease the vaccine's efficacy.
They said that the escape mutant E484K could indicate that COVID-19 is showing its ability to change its structure. The researchers also warned that there could be more problematic mutations in the following months or years.
"This virus may be taking the first steps down a fairly lengthy road towards vaccine resistance," said Andrew Ward, a Scripps Research's structural virologist in La Jolla, California.
A vaccine that works against the new variants?
According to Healthline's latest report, researchers released new evidence that the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine could be effective against the new variants found in the United Kingdom and South Africa. They explained that the new COVID-19 variants contain the N501Y mutation, which is within the medicine's spike protein.
The vaccine's developers added that their product was found effective against the new mutation. The results were shown by scientists from The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and Pfizer.
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Written by: Giuliano de Leon.
