Thread by @DrEricDing

WORRISOME & SERIOUS—You know how the world put travel bans against UK 🇬🇧 travel out of fear of the #B117 more contagious variant? Well, now, UK🇬🇧 put travel ban from Latin America & Portugal 🇵🇹 because U.K. thinks Brazil 🇧🇷 #COVID19 variant is *worse*. 🧵
nytimes.com/2021/01/14/wor…

2) At least two coronavirus variants are currently circulating in Brazil, and at least one has slipped its borders, traveling to Japan. Japanese authorities found one of those variants in four people traveling from Brazil earlier this week...

3) The variant contains a mutation that has been linked with higher contagiousness, similar to the variant found in 🇬🇧 and another in South Africa. Like the variant found in 🇿🇦, the one exported from Brazil to Japan also carries a mutation that may weaken the efficacy of vaccines

4) This same mutation has also been identified in the other coronavirus variant recently discovered in Brazil.

Experts have cautioned, however, that it would be very difficult for new variants of the coronavirus to evade vaccines entirely. (Keyword “entirely”)

5) The British ban is set to come into effect on Friday at 4 a.m., the transportation secretary Grant Shapps said on Twitter. “Travel from Portugal to the U.K. will also be suspended given its strong travel links with Brazil,”

6) Shapps added, although truck drivers transporting essential goods from Portugal will be exempted.
Britain has already banned flights from South Africa. Brazil banned flights from Britain on Christmas Day.

7) I’ve been trying to sound the alarm on the Brazil 🇧🇷 variant for several days now. It has been renamed to B1128– more specifically B.1.1.28(K417N/E484K/N501Y). There is another one called B.1.1.28(E484K)—both have the problematic E484K mutation that can escape antibodies! 🧵

https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1348606324901359619

8) Why are we so worried about this one? Because like the 🇿🇦 B1351 variant, the new ones also have the E484K mutation. In a recent study by @jbloom_lab, E484 mutation (inside the #SARSCoV2’s spike’s critical receptor binding domain) seemed to escape neutralizing antibodies—bad.

9) Well, How much escape? the E484K shows a 10x reduction of neutralization (“neutralization” = stopping the virus)
by various antibodies compared to wildtype (common #SARSCoV2) in some patients —a rather bad thing. It means the virus with E484K is worrying for “immune escape”.