ABOVE: © ISTOCK.COM, HARVEPINO
According to a study uploaded to GitHub on February 27 that has not been peer reviewed, an emerging variant of SARS-CoV-2 first spotted in November in Manaus, Brazil and known as P.1 is around twice as transmissible as the variant that gripped the country last spring. Manaus experienced another surge of cases in December, and the study’s model predicts that P.1 could evade antibodies from previous infections 25–61 percent of the time, perhaps pointing to reinfections as a driver of the recent COVID-19 wave.
The Guardian reports that many of the mutations that affect the variant’s spike protein are the same as those found in the B.1.351 variant first identified in South Africa. The study's authors write that three of the mutations allow the virus to more easily bind to the ACE2 receptor on human cells. ACE2 is a surface protein on cells in many tissues, ...
