A new variant is appearing on European soil. The latter bears the variant name “B1.214”.
According to the daily The evening, a variant is progressing on Belgian territory. It currently represents the same number of contaminations as the cases of South African or Brazilian variants, that is to say 4% of positive cases.
An unprecedented mutation
“It was our researcher Keith Durkin who identified this variant as part of the national virus genomic surveillance program which was launched at the end of December in our country.“, explained Vincent Bours, professor of human genetics and head of the laboratory for analysis and sequencing of the Sars-Cov-2 virus at ULiège. This variant has caught the eye of Belgian researchers”because he had a mutation that has never been seen before“Says the scientist. “Where, for the other variants, we rather observed a deletion within the genome of the virus, a disappearance of certain letters in the genomic line […]
Here, we observe an insertion, an addition of nine nucleotides to the sequence of the Spike protein. This is unheard of so far in the Sars-Cov-2 variants “.
A Sub-Saharan origin?
The researchers do not wish to advance precisely on the origin of this new strain “we can see that it is gradually increasing in Belgium, particularly on the side of Brussels, Flemish Brabant and Hainaut. But we are almost certain that it is not a Belgian strain. The phylogenetic tree has yet to complete itself but it could come from sub-Saharan Africa and would have been implanted here by travel“, Specifies Pr Vincent Bours.
According to the newspaper Le Soir, this new mutation is not classified in the category of worrying variants.
