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The new covid strains and what we can look forward to in 2021
We are at crossroads in 2021in COVID-19 pandemic. On the one hand, we have several vaccines, novel treatments, by now a set of established public health practices of test, trace, isolate, and on the other: the virus continues to rage, and new cases. Let’s view the emergence of new strains in that light and see where we get to this.
Back in October, when the UK was in lockdown, in Kent and Southwest England, they noted that there was surge in COVID cases. It turned out that there was a new strain of SARS-COV-2 that was responsible for this. Now we know that coronaviruses mutate once every two weeks or thereabouts, but when sufficient number of mutations accumulate, that’s when new variants emerge. This was a new variant as it had over 17 mutations in various places and one of them N501Y mutation was worrisome. The mutation N501Y was able to bind more effectively with the receptors. What does this mean?
First of all, N501Y would mean that at position 501in the genome, the virus would be replacing an Asparagine (N) for Tyrosine (Y), see
But then, with this altered protein, the virus would gain a property of rapidly binding to the receptors through which it was going to gain entry to human tissues…
