B117 Variant and “S gene dropout”1 Jan 2021 13:51
Guardian reporting on B117 variant. I had not heard of, 'S gene dropout' before reading the article:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/01/now-coronavirus-variant-us-since-october
There is this quote from the article, "The existence of a new and highly transmissible Sars CoV-2 variant was announced by the UK’s health secretary on 14 December, after Covid-testing laboratories reported that a growing number of their positive samples were missing a signal from one of the three genes their PCR tests use to confirm the presence of the virus."
The “S gene dropout” was the result of mutations in the gene encoding the spike protein which the virus uses to gain entry to human cells. The variant is thought to have been circulating in the UK since September.
Did B117 originate in the UK? It isn't clear, yet.
Speaking about the B117 variant in the US, there is this quote from Eric Topol, head of Scripps Research Translational Institute, “It has probably been here for a while at low levels – but you don’t see it until you look for it.”
Article states If B117 really is widely established in the US, then travel bans are unlikely to work, Topol added: “The variant is likely to become dominant [within the US] in the next few months, so what we need to do is to outrun it through a combination of really tight mitigation measures, including surveillance and testing, and vaccinating like there’s no tomorrow,” he said. “The vaccines should work fine.”
Even if the variant identified by Helix isn’t B117, the nature of some of the mutations it contains are concerning, because they may increase the virus’s ability to infect human cells, added Ravi Gupta, a professor of clinical microbiology at the University of Cambridge, UK, who helped sequence the B117 variant.
OMG! "...like there’s no tomorrow!!!"
Don't shoot the messanger, but ....
That's not the news I want to hear on New Year's day!
Test, test, test
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