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| On the 27th, medical staff are busy moving at the temporary screening test in front of Exit 9 of Gangnam Station in Seoul. 2020.12.27/News 1 © News1 Kwon Hyun-jin |
A man in his 80s, who was in self-isolation after returning from England, was diagnosed with a novel coronavirus infection (Corona 19) after his death. The quarantine authorities expected to be able to confirm whether the confirmed person was infected with the mutant virus in the first week of January. In the UK, a mutant virus has recently appeared, and many countries around the world are restricting entry.
According to the city of Goyang on the 27th, after returning from the UK on the 13th, the man was self-quarantined, but at 10:45 am on the 26th, the man had a cardiac arrest at his home and was transferred to Ilsan Hospital. Afterwards, first aid was provided, but he died around 11:27 am on the same day.
The quarantine authorities are planning to analyze samples of men who died as mutant viruses have recently been discovered in the UK.
Corona 19 virus mutations are checked through full-length genome analysis (NGS). It is a test that compares and analyzes all the sequences of the virus to confirm.
An official from the quarantine authority said, “We are currently securing (the male’s) specimens, and if a mutation test is performed as soon as it is secured, the results will be confirmed in the first week of January.”
Meanwhile, the government temporarily suspended all flights departing from the UK from the 23rd to the 31st to block the domestic inflow of the mutant virus found in the UK.
Mutation is a phenomenon in which a part of the viral genome is changed, and occurs frequently whenever a virus is replicated.
In particular, unlike DNA, RNA viruses such as Corona 19 are unstable and cause a lot of mutations and are not corrected even if errors occur during replication.
Therefore, there is a high probability that COVID-19 will continue to mutate in the future. It’s just like the influenza (flu) virus changing its prevalence every year.
However, not all genetic mutations cause significant changes to the virus. In some cases, mutations often have no effect on the expressed protein.
Recently, the virus mutation reported in the UK also caused mutations in some of the amino acids constituting the spike protein, but there is no significant change in the binding site to the antibody, so it is not enough to affect vaccine efficacy yet.
Unlike mutations, variants can show completely different patterns of disease, such as MERS and Corona 19. In that case, a new vaccine or treatment is needed.
However, it may be easier to develop a drug from scratch when a new drug is created due to the occurrence of variants.