A team of scientists working in Africa found a new strain of coronavirus with 34 mutations from travelers at the Angola airport – more than all known strains. This is reported by Izvestia.
It is noted that the new version of Coronavirus was revealed in the middle of February among tourists who arrived from Tanzania. “The genomes of viruses found from them were almost identical and presented an extremely modified sequence of the hereditary line A,” experts reported.
The new strain of coronavirus infection received a temporary name A.Voi.v2. According to scientists, all these mutations can increase the resistance of the virus to antibodies and increase its contagious.
If a person risks picked up the Angolan strain, he should still be vaccinated from COVID-19, noted the head of the Laboratory of Genomic Engineering MFTI Pavl Volchkov. “If the effectiveness of the vaccine was conditionally 92 percent, it will begin to decrease depending on the number of mutations. This does not mean that it will be zero. It will be equal to 86, 85 percent and so on,” he explained.
Earlier, the head of Rospotrebnadzor Anna Popova stated that almost 200 coronavirus mutations were revealed in Russia at the entrance of citizens to the country. “Detected 193 mutating options,” she said, noting that in 49 cases, mutations were not specified, they require additional study.