AHE BB

The World Health Organization’s latest weekly report on Tuesday showed that beta has been detected in 130 countries and seven new countries in the last week.

The variant, also known widely as B.1.351, has several significant mutations to the virus’ spike protein —E484K, K417N and N501Y — that make it easier for this variant to infect people, as well as potentially making it harder to treat, or to prevent with Covid vaccines.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also classes beta as a variant of concern and says it’s associated with around a 50% increased transmission rate.

“We know it’s more able to resist the vaccine. And all the data we have on that, particularly from South Africa, does raise concerns about that [the beta variant] being able to avoid vaccines in a population that’s only partially vaccinated or not vaccinated.”

The progressive increase in transmissibility and virulence of SARS-CoV-2 VOCs will result in a significantly larger, and more deadly, pandemic than would have occurred in the absence of VOC emergence.