Saturday, February 29, 2020

Brazil completes sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 gene, finds mutations

Reporter : Zhong Gusheng
Editor : Ming Xuan
Publisher : New Tang Dynasty Television
Ref : https://www.ntdtv.com/b5/2020/02/29/a102788794.html
English Translation , Editing : Gan Yung Chyan
                                              / KUCINTA SETIA

Image : "Corona virus". Courtesy of Instituto Aldofo Lutz, Brazil

Coronaviruses are susceptible to mutation. Mainland Chinese institutions have stopped publishing the SARS-CoV-2 (covi, in short) sequence more than a month ago and were suspected of concealing the virus mutation. A few days ago, Brazilian and British experts cooperated to complete the virus sequencing of the first confirmed COVID-19 (covid, in short) case in Brazil in only two days. They have found three mutations compared with the virus from Wuhan.


On 29 February 2020, Instituto Adolfo Lutz (IAL), the authoritative pathological laboratory in Brazil, cooperated with the Institute of Tropical Medicine of the School of Medicine of the University of São Paulo and the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom to complete the first case of covi gene sequencing in Brazil and the first confirmed case of covid in Latin America. Viral gene sequencing takes only two days in Brazil whereas in mainland China, it usually takes 15 days to complete the job.

The first and only confirmed case in Brazil to date is a 61-year-old male who travelled to northern Italy from 9 to 21 February 2020.

The Sao Paulo State Research Support Foundation (FAPESP) pointed out that preliminary analysis showed that the Brazilian coronavirus genome had three differences from the virus strain originally found in Wuhan.

Ester Cerdeira Sabino, one of the researchers, explained that unraveling the virus's ribonucleic acid (RNA) is helpful for tracking the virus's transmission path and is also crucial for vaccine development and diagnostic testing.

Sabino pointed out that the Brazilian virus came from Italy, which is different from Germany's. The latter has only two similar genetic mutations, so it can be concluded that more than one person transmitted the virus in Europe.

Researchers are sequencing and studying RNA mutations to analyze whether mutations affect the spread of the disease, such as Iran's higher mortality rate and whether it is related to genetic mutations.

Coronaviruses are very susceptible to mutation during transmission, which makes control difficult. The covid epidemic broke out last year, and the virus sequence information was not released for the first time until 11 January 2020. Afterwards, Chinese institutions intensively disclosed about 30 virus sequences, but all relevant Chinese institutions stopped publishing it from 22 January 2020 under CCP censorship. According to South China Morning Post, the Shanghai P3 Laboratory, which first announced the virus sequence, was officially closed by the next day.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences media issued a paper recently suggesting that stopping the publication of virus sequence data would make it impossible for the outside world to understand the mutation of the virus, so that it would not be able to take appropriate measures to decrease the difficulty of epidemic prevention.

Recently, the spread of covi has shown more and more elusive characteristics, including the difficulty to test the incubation period, more inaccuracy in nucleic acid detection, the unpredictable test results of covi in patients, and increasing diversity in the virus transmission channels. Multiple mutations may have occurred.

StayGate's Notes:
As of 1 March 2020, Brazil has 1 confirmed covid case while Ecuador has 1 confirmed covid case and Mexico has 4 confirmed covid cases. Covid is spreading rapidly in South America and Central America within two days. The United States has 79 confirmed covid cases including one death. However, there are no travel bans from these countries to date. 

Elsewhere in mainland China, there is an increase of 10 covid cases in Beijing. As a result, there are now 411 covid cases in Beijing including 8 deaths. Ningxia has an imported case of covid from Iran, where there are 493 confirmed covid cases, including 43 deaths.

Refs : https://ncov.dxy.cn/ncovh5/view/pneumonia, http://www.scmp.com

Further Ref : First report of COVID-19 in South America
http://virological.org/t/first-report-of-covid-19-in-south-america/409

Original Brazil Ref (in Portuguese) : IAL sequencia o genoma do virus do primeiro caso de COVID-19 no Brasil
http://www.ial.sp.gov.br/ial/perfil/homepage/destaques/ial-sequencia-o-genoma-do-virus-do-primeiro-caso-de-covid-19-no-brasil

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