Biologist Irina Yakutenko explained how a new frightening strain of covid from South Africa could appear

A well-known medical blogger, an expert in molecular biology, Irina Yakutenko, in her post on the FB, explained how a new strain B.1.1.529 could have arisen, which alarmed specialists around the world, forced WHO to convene an unscheduled meeting and forced many countries to cancel flights from South Africa. where, apparently, he appeared.

Here is what Yakutenko writes: “Usually new variants do not look like this: they differ from their predecessors by a certain stable set of mutations, but there are not so many mutations of these. The sudden appearance of a huge number of changes indicates that the new species did not form in the course of the usual sequential and often random changes when jumping from one person to another. A bunch of new mutations hints that B.1.1.529 could appear in the body of a person with immunodeficiency - for example, HIV, of which there is a lot in South Africa. The immune system of such people cannot completely destroy the virus, but they also have a cytokine storm less often, since this is an overreaction of immunity, and they have it broken in the other direction. As a result, the virus can multiply for months in the bodies of such people. Since the immune system is not completely turned off, it constantly attacks the virus, but does not destroy it at all. As a result, the weakest viruses die, but the viral particles, which carry changes that make them more resistant to immune attacks, survive and multiply. The cycle is repeated many times, and as a result, after a while we get a variant that is radically different from the original one. It turns out such an accelerated evolution of the virus within the same organism. "

Yakutenko also draws attention to the fact that all four patients with the new strain from Botswana were fully vaccinated. This suggests that B.1.1.529 is capable of evading the immune response and is dangerous, including for those who are vaccinated.