Dr. Luis Enjuanes, research professor at the Superior Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) and director of the coronavirus laboratory at the National Center of Biotechnology in Madrid, said the next monovalent Covid-19 vaccine will be “only for Ómicron, because Vaccination with two different serotypes of the virus can cause interference”, although “there is always a degree of protection and neutralization”.
He detailed during the meeting: “The virus continues to evolve, but the fact is that the vaccine only targets micron variants, which is very good, although it neutralizes micron variants very well, but not the previous variants, and it Micron variants carried are no longer so common.” “Understanding the virus and preparing for future health challenges”, organized this Monday by the PharmaMar Foundation and the National Association of Health Informaticians (ANIS).
In this sense, Dr. Enjuanes states: ‘The virus continues to evolve’ And, due to its extreme speed, “when a new vaccine is launched against a specific variant, there is already another new vaccine.” However, he assured that “they are all related to the T lymphocyte response to a large extent,” so , “There is always a level of protection and neutralization”.
Furthermore, he noted that the name “Ómicron” for the new variant is “no longer entirely correct, as the virus has evolved a lot”. “We have been calling the viruses that emerged in recent months Ómicron, and the last virus, EG.5, had a 34-amino-acid change in the most important protective protein, so they are very different,” he said.
“In humans Viruses constantly reinvent themselves to themselves. They are spread from person to person by birds, mosquitoes (like Ebola virus), or through the air between people, like coronavirus. Between 2011 and 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed 1,483 epidemic outbreaks in 172 countries,” he declared.
The newly formulated monovalent vaccine against Covid-19 developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna only works against Ómicron’s XBB.1.5 variant that emerged earlier this year, although it is no longer the most common variant. The same goes for the new EG.5.
The vaccine has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Union. Although XBB.1.5 is no longer the dominant version in circulation, the new vaccine should provide protection against the currently most prevalent EG.5 variant. “this Prevention through vaccination Represents the best investment-benefit ratio for virus prevention,” the virologist concluded.
Covid-19: Did it come from a lab or animals?
Regarding the possible origins of Covid-19 (SARS-Cov 2), Dr. Enjuanes assures that “It is extremely unlikely that the virus came from a laboratory from Wuhan” because “there is no evidence that the virus escaped from the laboratory of the Wuhan Institute of Virology” but it may be of “animal origin, particularly from raccoons.”
“The simplest and most direct explanation for the origin of SARS-CoV 2 is a zoonotic origin, there is no evidence that it came from a laboratory, on the other hand, raccoon cages sold in Wuhan markets had coronavirus sample The sequence identity with human viruses is 99.93%, where the virus comes from. ” said Dr. Enjuanes.
However, he explained that before SARS-Cov 2, there were other types of coronaviruses because they were “so abundant that they can infect almost every animal species.” “Nine human coronaviruses are known so farsix of which have been isolated, cause common winter colds, but three are still fatal to humans,” he noted.
In this sense, of the three coronavirus variants, the one that remains deadly to humans is the first SARS-CoV, which appeared in 2002 and infected 8,000 people in six months, causing 774 deaths and Spread to 29 countries; The MERS-Cov variant that emerged in 2012 infected 2,650 people, killed 37%, and has spread to 27 countries.
Finally, there is SARS-CoV 2, has infected 770 million people It has killed 6.9 million people (less than 2% of those infected), and it has spread to 235 countries, triggering a pandemic.
“Coronavirus Apparently they come from bats, they are natural reservoirs of SARS-Cov,” said the virologist, who agreed with Dr. Isabel Solá, a virologist and CSIC scientist specializing in coronaviruses, who pointed out at the conference that “bats are in the presence of many viruses. plays a special role in the origin. Pandemics, especially coronavirus.
Historical virus spread and future pandemics
During the day, Dr. Isabel Solá, a virologist and CSIC scientist who specializes in coronaviruses, explained that “viruses are very diverse” and that they “replicate only in living cells and respond to environmental changes”.
“Nucleic acids determine what happens to cells when they are infected, e.g. Some people are infected for life Just like chickenpox, HIV or herpes,” he details.
Likewise, he noted that “viruses are the most abundant organisms in the ocean, providing greater genetic diversity for life in the ocean and on Earth.”
“We can be sure There will be more emerging viruses and more epidemics Because there are more than 300,000 viruses in mammals yet to be discovered. Therefore, we should increase our preparedness for some kind of upcoming pandemic. ” the expert said of the future of the virus and its spread.
In this regard, he asserted that one of the fundamental issues in preventing future pandemics is to “not only focus on humans; animals that can transmit viruseslike bats, in the environment”, in line with the World Health Organization’s One Health concept.
Dr. Sola pointed out that for the occurrence of new pandemics, determinants such as natural genetic variation, environmental and ecological changes, and human activities will all play a role.
“The virus is still here One of the leading causes of disease and death in the world, especially in countries with poor health system capacity. Additionally, they have a strong ability to effect change, which gives them an advantage to continue to grow and succeed,” he explains.
Dr. Luis Enjuanes also highlighted the impact of climate change on the spread of viruses. For example, the spread of Zika virus through tiger mosquitoes is linked to global warming because “tiger mosquitoes are moving northward.” Temperatures are rising,” so while the virus has historically been present in the Southern Hemisphere, it is increasingly prevalent in the Northern Hemisphere.
Another virus affected by weather conditions is West Nile virus (WNV), which, as Dr. Enjuanes explains, “can travel from North Africa to Ibiza within 48 hours due to strong air currents carrying mosquitoes”.