Virus variants in Asia threaten the whole world

Berlin: According to genome databases, such as nextstrain.org, there are now more than 1,000 known variants of the SARS CoV-2 virus.

Up to now, the "variants of concern" have been named after the places where they were first discovered. But in a move to avoid stigmatizing particular countries, the World Health Organization has now introduced a new naming system based on the letters of the Greek alphabet. The UK/Kent, South African, Brazilian and Indian variants will now be given the letters Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta respectively. But the labels will not replace their more complex scientific names.

The new variant discovered in Vietnam appears to be a cross between Alpha (B.1.1.7) and Delta (B.1.617). According to Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long, the new strain spreads "quickly by air", which could explain the rapid rise in the number of new infections in May.

Up to now, Vietnam had escaped relatively lightly, recording some 3,500 confirmed cases and 47 deaths from the beginning of the pandemic to the start of May 2021. The government successfully contained COVID outbreaks by imposing a brief but strict lockdown and comprehensive quarantine restrictions.

But since May, Vietnam has already recorded more than 3,000 new cases — above all in the provinces of Bac Ninh and Bac Giang, where hundreds of thousands of people work in huge production facilities for international technology enterprises.

Determining the course of the pandemic

One might think that those numbers are still relatively low, but the new variants in Asiaand elsewhere should be of concern to everyone wherever they live. And that is not just because it means that the pandemic will continue to cause more suffering and deprivation worldwide.

In the medium term, the Northern Hemisphere could also be affected again despite extensive vaccination programs. In a globalized world, such variants spread fast. And if these new strains increasingly adapt to their human hosts, then our antibodies — formed either by vaccination or infection — will no longer protect us at some point. The antigen or PCR tests would no longer detect the variants and instead produce false negatives. And the vaccinations available would also gradually stop working.

That makes it vital to identify variants as quickly as possible using genetic sequencing and to ensure that sufficient amounts of the right types of vaccines are available globally and not just in wealthy nations.