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<\/a><\/p>\nOver the past couple of weeks, the new coronavirus strain known as\u00a0\u201cSuper COVID\u201d<\/a>\u00a0has been racing through the UK and making headlines all over the globe, but scientists insist that the new mutant COVID strain in South Africa is potentially much more dangerous.\u00a0 Just like \u201cSuper COVID\u201d in the UK, there is evidence that the South African strain spreads faster, and\u00a0South Africa\u2019s health minister has warned that there is\u00a0\u201canecdotal evidence\u201d<\/a>\u00a0of a \u201clarger proportion of younger patients with no co-morbidities presenting with critical illness\u201d.\u00a0 But the biggest reason why health authorities are so concerned about this particular strain is because it has mutated so dramatically that the current vaccines that have been developed may not work against it.\u00a0 The following comes from a Reuters article entitled\u00a0\u201cUK scientists worry vaccines may not protect against S.African coronavirus variant\u201d<\/a>\u2026<\/p>\n UK scientists expressed concern on Monday that COVID-19 vaccines being rolled out in Britain may not be able to protect against a new variant of the coronavirus that emerged in South Africa and has spread internationally.<\/p>\n Both Britain and South Africa have detected new, more transmissible variants of the COVID-19-causing virus in recent weeks that have driven a surge in cases. British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on Monday he was now very worried about the variant identified in South Africa.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Even though the UK is the epicenter of the \u201cSuper COVID\u201d outbreak, the British are so alarmed by the South African strain\u00a0that they have banned all flights from South Africa.\u00a0 In an interview with the BBC, Hancock admitted that he is\u00a0\u201cincredibly worried\u201d<\/a>\u00a0about what is happening in South Africa right now\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m incredibly worried about the South African variant, and that\u2019s why we took the action that we did to restrict all flights from South Africa,\u201d he told the BBC\u2019s \u201cToday\u201d program.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a very, very significant problem \u2026 and it\u2019s even more of a problem than the U.K. new variant.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n As\u00a0the Daily Mail recently explained<\/a>, the vaccines that have already been developed are designed to get the body to identify COVID\u2019s \u201cspike protein\u201d, and if this does not happen they will not work properly\u2026<\/p>\n Covid vaccines \u2013 including the Pfizer\/BioNTech and Oxford University\/AstraZeneca jabs currently being rolled out across Britain \u2013 work by training the body to spot the virus\u2019s spike protein.<\/p>\n If the spike mutates so much that it becomes unrecognizable then it could render vaccines useless or make them less potent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Scientists are telling us that the new mutant strain in South Africa has a total of eight changes to the spike protein, and Dr. John Bell of Oxford University is calling them\u00a0\u201cpretty substantial changes\u201d<\/a>\u2026<\/p>\n Dr. John Bell of Oxford University said Sunday the variant identified in South Africa was worrisome in this regard, however.<\/p>\n \u201cThey both have multiple, different mutations in them, so they\u2019re not a single mutation,\u201d he told Times Radio. \u201cAnd the mutations associated with the South African form are really pretty substantial changes in the structure of the (virus\u2019 spike) protein.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n At this moment, we do not know if the current vaccines will be rendered useless by this new mutant strain or not.<\/p>\n But it is\u00a0being reported<\/a>\u00a0that early tests have shown that at least one of the mutations appears to have made the virus\u00a0more resistant to antibodies<\/a>\u2026<\/p>\n One, called E484K, is particularly alarming, Dr Richard Lessells, an infectious-disease specialist at the KwaZulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform, told the Wall Street Journal.<\/p>\n When he and his team tested antibodies from donated plasma or lab made ones against that mutated bit of the virus variant, the immune cells were less effective.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Of course much more testing needs to be done, and those tests are being conducted right now.<\/p>\n According to a top official in the UK, scientists may be able to come to some sort of a conclusion\u00a0in a couple of weeks<\/a>\u2026<\/p>\n Jonathan Van-Tam, England\u2019s deputy chief medical officer, said in response to a question from POLITICO on December 30 that this work can take 12 to 14 days, and that it may be a couple of weeks before scientists can give \u201ca solid steer\u201d on whether the vaccines will be effective on new variants.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So it may be a while before we know for sure if the current vaccines will be effective against this frightening new mutant strain in South Africa or not.<\/p>\n But what we do know is that this new strain is rapidly becoming dominant\u00a0in large portions of South Africa<\/a>\u2026<\/p>\n The variant, 501.V2, is more infectious than the original COVID-19 virus and has rapidly become dominant in South Africa\u2019s coastal areas. It is expected that the variant will quickly become dominant inland in Johannesburg, the country\u2019s largest city, and the surrounding Gauteng province, he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n If it is becoming dominant there, there is a good chance that it will become dominant as it spreads elsewhere as well.<\/p>\n In recent days, two cases of the South African strain have been confirmed in the UK, and there have also been cases detected in\u00a0Finland, Switzerland and Australia.<\/p>\n Then on Monday, a case popped up\u00a0in Austria<\/a>\u2026<\/p>\n On Monday, Austria announced that it had discovered one case of the South African mutation in a 30-year-old woman who returned from a trip on Dec. 6.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And officials in Japan just announced that a case has been identified\u00a0in their country<\/a>\u2026<\/p>\n Japan on Monday detected a coronavirus variant found in South Africa, the government said, the first such discovery in a nation that has already identified more than a dozen cases of another variant that is spreading rapidly in Britain.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So it appears that the cat is already out of the bag.<\/p>\n A whole host of nations have already put travel restrictions in place to try to keep this deadly new strain from spreading more widely.<\/p>\n But so far the U.S. is not among them.\u00a0 In fact, testing is not even required for people traveling to the U.S. from South Africa.<\/p>\n Just like we have seen with \u201cSuper COVID\u201d, it is probably just a matter of time before the South African strain spreads all over the planet.<\/p>\n And if the current vaccines will not work against it, that will put scientists back to square one in fighting this pandemic.<\/p>\n Of course there are tens of millions of people in the United States that will never take any COVID vaccine under any circumstances.\u00a0 Many are deeply concerned about the potential long-term effects of these experimental mRNA vaccines, and there is still so much that we do not know about them.<\/p>\n