A mobile drug testing truck in New York City.

(illustration) -

Lev Radin / Pacific Press / Shutterstock / SIPA

  • After the “English”, “Brazilian” and “South African” variant, here is the “New York” variant, which is booming in the American metropolis.

  • A priori more contagious, it is similar to the South African variant, more difficult to face for vaccines.

  • However, researchers still want to be very cautious when the information is fragmented for the moment.

He's the new variant everyone's talking about and he's from New York this time around.

Of the variants of the coronavirus, we have already counted more than 20,000 since the start of the pandemic, recalls RTL, but the general public has only been made aware of this issue since December and the emergence of the “English” variant.

Since then, we have also spoken of a so-called "Brazilian" variant and another called "South African".

20 Minutes

wanted to know what was happening with this newcomer, across the Atlantic.

Why is this variant "New Yorker"?

The new variant has a scientific name: B.1.526.

As usual it more commonly takes the name of the country or region where it was first observed, which is not necessarily the area in which it actually appeared.

It may have been traveling quietly for a while, before actually being spotted elsewhere.

In this case, in New York, one of the cities in the United States most affected by the pandemic, especially during the first wave.

If we are to believe the American press, it was in November 2020 that it was observed for the first time, on the island of Manhattan.

Everything has gone very quickly since the end of 2020. According to

Le Figaro

, at the end of February, at least a quarter of the cases of Covid-19 in New York were cases of the new variant.

It was only 3% of cases in January.

Asked by the daily, Antoine Flahault, professor of Public Health at the University of Geneva, is not surprised: "It is no coincidence that the mutation is gaining momentum in the United States: a variant has more of free field in parts of the world where the virus circulates a lot.

Remember also that the New York metropolis, and particularly Manhattan, is one of the most densely populated areas in the world, which helps the development of an epidemic.

Is this variant more dangerous than the others?

"Many unknowns remain," warns the chief health adviser of the US administration, Anthony Fauci.

However, two studies have recently been carried out in the United States: the first by the New York University of Columbia, the other by a group of researchers from the California Institute of Technology.

If the

New York Times

specifies that these studies have not yet been peer reviewed or published in a scientific journal, as the scientific protocol requires, the results are consistent and show a real dissemination of the variant.

As for these three better-known cousins, the New York variant is defined by a modification of the spike protein, the “crown” which gives its name to the “coronavirus”.

It is with this protein that the virus enters cells.

It is therefore a mutation that makes Covid-19 more contagious.

As

Le Monde

recalled

in January, “paradoxically, a more contagious virus can do much more damage than a more deadly virus”.

Because it is the contagiousness and the ability of the virus to spread that is the key factor.

Moreover, in these studies, which remain to be confirmed, on the new variant, it seems that the elderly are even more severely affected than usual.

Patients infected with this strain of Covid-19 more often report serious cases and are therefore more hospitalized.

Should we be concerned about the effectiveness of vaccines?

It is still a little early to have clear indications on this subject.

Of course, each variant raises concerns that the vaccine will be less effective.

In this case, the concern comes from the fact that this new variant seems to resemble the so-called “South African” one, so far more difficult to combat than the so-called “English” variant, for example.

In

Le Figaro

, Philippe Amouyel, professor of public health at the University Hospital of Lille, wants to be so reassuring in any case cautious: he recalls that "the vaccine Johnson & Johnson [the last released in the United States] would be 60% effective On the South African variant.

What to give hope for the New York variant.

An efficiency rate of 60% is obviously less good than 90%, but it is still not nothing.

RTL noted that Anthony Fauci considered that even under these conditions, the vaccine "remains in the efficiency cushion".

In terms of reducing health risks, it is not "all or nothing", a vaccine, medication or prophylactic measure (confinement, barrier gestures, etc.) that are 60% effective remain a good point in trying to avoid , for example, the saturation of hospitals and,

ultimately

, deaths.

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