Current Affairs Brain Booster for UPSC & State PCS Examination (Topic: Coronavirus Strain D614G)

Current Affairs Brain Booster for UPSC & State PCS Examination

Coronavirus Strain D614G

Malaysia has detected a strain of the new coronavirus that’s been found to be 10 times more infectious than the strain currently circulating.
The mutant strain, earlier seen in other parts of the world and called D614G, was found in at least three of the 45 cases in a cluster that started from a restaurant owner returning from India and breaching his 14-day home quarantine. The man has since been sentenced to five months in prison and fined. The strain was also found in another cluster involving people returning from the Philippines.

The strain has been found in many other countries and has become the predominant variant in Europe and the US.
Coronavirus is made of spike proteins and the recently discovered mutant of the virus is called D614G.
As per the experts, D614G is present in the proteins and changes the amino acid position at 614, from D (aspartic acid) to G (glycine). That's how it is named D614G.

The D614G mutation was first detected in Europe in February in a swap sample. So far there is no evidence that infection with SARS-CoV-2 containing the G614 variant will lead to more severe disease.
Researches claim that D614G strain has a higher viral load and infectious pattern than that of virus 'Wuhan1'.
Medical experts state that till now the mutant only brings changes in the protein spike and most likely won't affect the immunogenicity much.
This means the vaccine is made for COVID-19 can be used for the D614G strain as well. As long as the mutant isn't aggressive, the treatment works.

Until late 2019, only six coronaviruses were known to infect humans: HCoV-229E, HCoV-OC43, SARS-CoV (SARS-CoV-1), HCoV-NL63, CoVHKU1, and MERS-CoV.
A seventh, SARS-CoV-2, emerged in the winter of 2019 from Wuhan, China. SARS-CoV-2 is closely related to SARS-CoV-1, a virus that appeared from Guangdong province, China in late 2002.
The coronavirus spike (S) protein mediates receptor binding and fusion of the viral and cellular membrane. The S protein extends from the viral membrane and is uniformly arranged as trimers on the virion surface to give the appearance of a crown (corona in Latin).
Currently, there are six strains of coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). The original one is the L strain, that appeared in Wuhan in December 2019. Its first mutation - the S strain - appeared at the beginning of 2020, while, since mid-January 2020, we have had strains V and G. To date strain G is the most widespread: it mutated into strains GR and GH at the end of February 2020.
G and GR are the most frequent across Europe and Italy.
GH strain seems close to non-existence in Italy, while it occurs more frequently in France and Germany
In North America, the most widespread strain is GH, while in South America we find the GR strain more frequently. In Asia, where the Wuhan L strain initially appeared, the spread of strains G, GH and GR is increasing. These strains landed in Asia only at the beginning of March, more than a month after their spread in Europe.