Variant A.30: a terrible ghost, which cancels vaccines

A team of scientists in Germany has warned that an old COVID variant called A.30 has resistance to Pfizer and AstraZeneca COVID vaccines. Incredibly this variant has not been detected for months, with the latest A.30 samples reported between May and June of this year.

According to the COVID variant monitoring network GISAID, only five cases of A.30 have been reported worldwide: three in Angola, one in Sweden and one in the UK.

For this reason, some observers think the variant may no longer exist. An absolute, untouchable variant. who commits suicide and becomes a ghost?

Regardless, in a study published in the journal Cellular & Molecular Immunology on 25 October, German scientists said that a potential future spread of the variant "requires careful monitoring and rapid introduction of countermeasures."

The study notes that A.30 has several mutations in its spike protein, which the virus uses to attach itself to human cells, compared to variant B.1 that circulated early in the pandemic.

One of the mutations in A.30, called E484K, is known to confer some resistance to the antibodies we get from vaccination or natural infection.

The study caused a stir on Twitter. Brian Hjelle, a professor in the Department of Pathology at the University of New Mexico, said the variant needs monitoring and "has [an] impressive set of mutations and is approaching true immune leak."

A.30 variant, compared with wild type B.1, indeed has impressive array of mutations and is approaching true immune escape. Needs watching. pic.twitter.com/Qp5QXzNY2D

– Brian Hjelle, virologist (@hjelle_brian) October 27, 2021

Despite this ability to escape vaccines and antibodies, many doctors are not worried. Professor Francois Balloux, a scientist in the Department of Genetics at University College London, pointed to the aforementioned GISAID data and stated that "A.30 is in all likelihood extinct now".

And Jeremy Kamil, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at Louisiana State University Health Shreveport, echoed the point. "It's probably already extinct," he tweeted.

In a statement to Newsweek, Markus Hoffmann, a researcher in the Infection Biology Unit at the German Primate Center's Animal Research Laboratory and lead author of study A.30, said the data actually suggests that “A. 30 is not currently spreading on a global level ”. All easy and solved then. No, simply A.30 may be alive and well, but able to escape testing in regions with non-advanced health systems. In short, A.30 could have escaped to Africa. In short, A.30 would be a ghost fugitive who, however, could potentially destroy the entire system based on vaccination Green passes. Are the governments of half Europe, or half the world, dependent on a fugitive virus?

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The article Variant A.30: a terrible ghost, which cancels vaccines comes from ScenariEconomici.it .

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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/151036-2/ on Fri, 29 Oct 2021 07:00:10 +0000.