First Delta and now the next dangerous corona mutation! A study found terrifying findings about the virus variant Lambda from South America.
First it was the British virus variant that spread rapidly in Germany and around the world. This could be transmitted faster than the original virus and thus led to many infections in a very short time. Just as dangerous is the currently widespread Delta variant from India, which has long accounted for a significant part of the infections in Germany and above all is causing concern with regard to the coming autumn and winter *.
Corona variant from South America: what makes lambda so dangerous?
The federal government is therefore already planning restrictions for the coming months *, echo24.de * reports on it. But with the new Lambda variant, which is currently rampant in South America, Japanese researchers came to an even more frightening result. The variant could well be more dangerous than its predecessors and for a very important reason: It could be more resistant to the existing vaccines. At least these are the results of a recent Japanese study. However, this has not yet been checked by other researchers.
So far, the vaccines have also offered protection against the various virus variants. According to the results of the Japanese researchers, however, lambda’s spike protein has three mutations. It is known so far that the spike protein is the part of the coronavirus that plays the most important role in spreading it. Because: It is precisely with the help of this protein that it penetrates the host cells.
Variant from South America: Lambda resistant to vaccines?
The three mutations in the lambda variant can now ensure that the antibodies in the human organism no longer switch off the virus as effectively, reports stuttgarter-nachrichten.de . The Geneva World Health Organization (WHO) had already targeted lambda in June and determined that the changes in lambda can make it more contagious – or the human body could even fight it more poorly. Meanwhile, the WHO only classifies lambda as a “variant of interest”, while the Japanese researchers see it as a “variant of concern”.
The dangerous virus variant was first discovered in Peru in August 2020. In the meantime it has been found in many countries in South America and it has long since reached Europe. Around 100 infections with the lambda variant were detected in Germany (as of August 4, 2021). It is still unclear whether lambda is more dangerous than the currently feared Delta variant.
Lambda: The list of virus variants could get longer!
How fast the virus variant can spread can already be observed in Peru. “In December we had just 200 lambda infections, at the end of March it was already half of all samples in Lima and now we are nationwide at over 80 percent,” said microbiologist Pablo Tsukayama on Deutschlandfunk. For months he followed the spread of the aggressive variant in his home country. He and his team came to the conclusion: “Lambda has risen to the dominant variant in Peru in a very short time.”
Lambda has superseded all variants previously classified as even more dangerous by the WHO and even prevailed against the gamma variant from Brazil. As reported by ntv.de , Tsukayama is of the opinion that this will certainly not be the last mutation in Latin America and around the world. It is also likely that another mutant will appear during the third wave in winter between July and September . * Echo24.de is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA.
Rubriklistenbild: © Achmad Ibrahim/dpa
