Emergence of Novel Variants of SARS-CoV-2.
Virus=SARS-COV-2
A quick hypothesis on “Emergence of Novel/strong Variants of SARS-CoV-2”.
An immune-compromised patient (patients taking immune-suppressing drugs, HIV patients) offers little support from the immune system to clear the virus. These patients tend to shed the virus for longer duration. In a recent study, an HIV patient shed the virus for more than 200 days.
Study link: https://www.krisp.org.za/publications.php?pubid=336
If these patients are treated with vaccines or antibody-containing plasma, it might help the virus to mutate.
In one study, a patient on immune-suppressing cancer chemotherapy drugs was treated with antibody-containing plasma taken from individuals who had recovered from COVID-19. It was only after the plasma treatments that the virus began to rapidly mutate, and a dominant new stronger strain eventually emerged. The authors proposed that the administered antibodies had actually accelerated the mutation rate in the virus.
Study link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03291-y
“survival of the fittest”
Similar outcomes can be expected from vaccination of immune-compromised patients. Emergence of novel and stronger strains that are resistant to the antibodies induced by the vaccine.
Already a study published by researchers from Pfizer has shown that vaccine effectiveness is reduced for many of these virus strains.
Study link: https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMc2102017
The above studies can be used to argue that implementing mass vaccination campaigns are responsible for creating these stronger-antibody resistant virus variants.
But it is likely that the argument will be to have repeated shots of vaccines every few months!
Food for thought for Indian leaders : India has around 2.5 million HIV cases, imagine what will happen if the virus starts mutating because of vaccination or other antibody-injection treatments.
Thank you.
Ankit
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