Good News For Vaccine Manufacturers, More Deadly B.1.616 and the AP N440K Variants That Have Emerged Are Gaining Gradual Dominance In Circulation!

Forget about the current SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern Like B.1.17, B.1.617, B.1.351, P.1, B.1.427, and B.1.429, as Thailand Medical News had warned that a catastrophic COVID-19  surge would soon start around the July or August of this year…globally that is and not regionally, https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/thailand-medical-news-apologizes-about-a-prediction-that-a-new-catastrophic-covid-surge-will-occur-in-august-new-study-shows-it-will-start-earlier-in-  ,we start this series of articles every Sunday to introduce our readers the key players of this coming surge starting with the minor ones first. (We are saving the key players of this coming surge till the last as that would really shock the whole medical and research community as to what we have uncovered.) 



We first start with the B.1.616 strain that was first in France and was found to be able to escape detection by current COVID-19 nasal swab PCR test. Not only does this new variant evade almost all current PCR test platforms, it quickly entrenches itself into the deeper levels of the lungs upon infection where it wreaks havoc on the human host, often with lethal consequences. The good news is that it quickly kills more than half of the individuals it infects in less than a month, sparing them the agony of long term suffering.

The study findings of this new variant are published on a preprint server and are currently being peer reviewed. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.05.21256690v1

The study team led by Dr Pierre Fillatre, from the Centre Hospitalier de Saint-Brieuc in France told Thailand Medical News, “This B.1.616 variant is poorly detected by current COVID-19 test and exhibits a high lethality and is quickly becoming dominant not only in France but also in other European countries like Spain and Germany. Nearly half of the patients died in less than a month, a much higher rate than the 16 per cent mortality among other hospitalized Covid-19 patients.“
 
The WHO has been notified of this new development but as usual are typically slow to react.

A leading infectious disease researcher with the Institute of Microbiology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing said the variant, first detected in France earlier this year, had made the Chinese health authorities “quite nervous”.
 
“If such a variant continues to escapes surveillance and becomes dominant in circulation, the whole system will collapse,” the Beijing-based researcher said, asking not to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.
 
It was reported that in early January, the Lannion hospital in Cotes-d’Armor had an unexpected outbreak of an infectious disease, the paper said. The patients had the typical symptoms of Covid-19, but most of their standard RT-PCR swab tests came back negative.

Doctors were puzzled because these patients were admitted for non-COVID-19 reasons, tested negative before admission, and stayed in wards strictly separated from COVID -19 patients. From deep inside their lungs, scientists isolated an unknown variant of the Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
 
This new variant in the patients was identified as the B.1.616 variant and it has nine mutations across its genome, including one known as E484K at the spike protein. The E 484K mutation is also present in two variants of concern from South Africa and Brazil and can allow the virus to bypass immune protections formed with previous infections or vaccination, according to Dr Fillatre and colleagues.
 
The B.1.616variant might have dodged the conventional testing by reducing infection at the upper respiratory tract, the researchers speculated.
 
Although some viral particles might still linger at the nose or throat, their number could be “below the limit of detection” by commercial testing kits, the study team said.
 
The study team was surprised by the variant’s high fatality rate ie it killed 44 per cent of its victims, or nearly three times the rate of the B.1.1.7 variant first detected in Britain.
 
However the French variant has one weakness. The researchers compared its spread to other variants such as B.1.1.7, and found that the outbreaks were limited mostly to small clusters. This could be due to its transmissibility but the researchers warn that just one more close mutation on it could easily make it a new killing machine and even if it does not happen, it is already slowly gaining prevalence.
 
The next lethal strain that is slowly gaining prevalence is a new variant called the AP N440K variant that first emerged in the Indian state of Andra Pradesh, hence the abbreviation AP.
 
This new AP N440K variant is 15 times more lethal than the current B.1.617 strains that is wreaking havoc in India and is soon to become dominant in circulation.
 
To date the N440K variant of coronavirus is majorly being seen in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, parts of Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh.
 
Researchers at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) discovered the new coronavirus variant N440K. This variant was first discovered in Kurnool at Andhra Pradesh. It is said to be at least 10 times more infectious. 
 
The district COVID Special Officer and Principal of Andhra Medical College Dr PV Sudhakar confirmed the enhanced power of the virus and warned, “We have observed that the new variant has shorter incubation period and the progress of the disease is much rapid. In the earlier cases, a patient affected with the virus would take at least a week to reach the hypoxia or dyspnea stage. But in the present context, patients are reaching the serious condition-stage within three or four days. And that is why there is heavy pressure on beds with oxygen or ICU beds.”
 
The study findings of this new variant was also published on a preprint server and are currently being peer reviewed as well and WHO has also been notified. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.30.441434v1
 
While vaccine manufacturers are still coming up with PR statements that their vaccines can work with the new emerging second and third generation variants, more merging studies are showing that this is not the case.
 
Some of these vaccine manufacturers are suggesting booster doses which Thailand Medical News predicts will be a totally disastrous approach as the newer generation SARS-CoV-2 variant are now fast evolving than ever.
 
There are lots more of second and third generation variants and also recombined and reassortant variants that are fast emerging and becoming fit and also becoming rapidly dominant in circulation and prevalence and we will be covering more of these in coming weeks including a prospective key player that is a reasssortant strain that was discovered in China and is expected to become dominant soon.

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For more on the emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants and the impending catastrophic COVID-19 surge, keep on logging to Thailand Medical News.