[ethbr0]

> The people who tested positive with the new strain, which is said to spread more easily and was blamed for a recent spike in infections in the U.K., returned to Japan this month — two at Tokyo's Haneda airport and and three at Kansai International Airport in Osaka.

This is talking about the SARS-CoV-2 VOC 202012/01 variant [0], aka B.1.1.7., aka carrying the N501Y mutation.

No news here, other than confirmed spread to Japan.

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/scientific-br...

[dnautics]

That's interesting that it's an N -> Y mutation, if it's a surface mutation, that AA shift is typically associated with tighter specificity in binding to it's target, e.g. and in antibody studies. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2829252/

[ethbr0]

I think this is a NextStrain link to it. There's probably more information, jumping off from there.

https://nextstrain.org/groups/neherlab/ncov/S.N501?animate=2...

[lbeltrame]

N501Y itself has already appeared around the world. By itself, it does look that it is not more transmissible (see Prof. Francois Balloux's Twitter for some explanations). The deletion, again by itself is not new, and also in this case it doesn't seem it has (on its own) increased fitness over the others.

N50Y has also a similar antibody neutralization profile as the non-mutated version.

Of course, these data refer to the mutations on their own, not together.

More on the deletion (on its own, again): while it is supposedly tied to a faster entry into the cells (twice as efficient in experimental assays), it look like it has lower fitness in absence of an ongoing immune response (it would lower in presence - but not disappear - in the immunocompromised patient it was first found into between treatments with convalescent serum).