Present in more than one hundred countries, at present, the British variant has just appeared in Tunisia, as confirmed this Tuesday, March 2, 2021, the Ministry of Health.
This new strain of coronavirus is characterized by visibly very rapid spread with sometimes disastrous health consequences.
This variant of the COVID immediately concerned the country’s scientific and health organizations. British virologists quickly estimated that this mutation in the virus, called VOC-2012012/01 (previously VUI-202012/01) or more simply B.1.1.7, appeared in London in London.
The first estimates indicated that the transfer would have been the source of 62% of the contamination in London in December. We are now talking about 90% of the positive cases analyzed across the Channel and the United Kingdom has since faced great difficulties in its hospitals.
This mutation of the virus is qualified as “English” because it was identified on British soil, but it was able to take place in another country. The emergence of this new strain is not yet explained with precision.
According to the first hypotheses, the VOC-202012/01 varying could have been born in one or more immunocompromised patients, in other words whose immune defenses are insufficient.
In some of these patients, the immune system is assisted by a transfusion of extracted antibodies in healed patients. In the event that the coronavirus causes a long infection, this treatment can cause resistance and therefore variations in the virus, especially at the level of its RNA.
In November and December 2020, the New England Journal of Medicine and CELL scientific journals reported the existence of two patients, one with antiphospholipid antibody syndrome and the other of cancer, infected with the SARS-COV-2 for a long time and treated with blood transfusion of antibody.
