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Lauren Hough Loses Lambda Prize Nomination After a Twitter Feud

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She added: “I expected more from Lambda than character assassination by vague accusation based on Twitter rumors, for telling people — not one group, but people — to read the book.”

Acquaye and Scales said in a joint interview that an independent judging panel and Lambda Literary had both contributed to the decision to withdraw the book from contention, and said that the organization had not taken a position on “The Men.”

As a result of Hough’s posts, Scales said in the interview, “many trans folks felt like they couldn’t, they were not allowed to be in these conversations.” Acquaye said that the posts “did not uplift other queer people and these voices.”

In her Substack newsletter, Hough said that she had discussed “The Men” with Newman, including “how to make the book recognize the reality of transgender people.”

“Other books that started from this premise — all the men disappear — have erased the existence of trans people, and it was important to her not to do that, to be as sensitive as possible,” Hough wrote. “So when I saw people assuming that simple idea was the entirety of the plot, I told them to read the book before assuming the worst.”

For this, she wrote, she was labeled a trans-exclusionary radical feminist — something she denied.

(Previous books with similar, gender-eliminating or -separating scenarios “were written before there was much attention on anything beyond a gender binary,” said Brian Attebery, an English professor at Idaho State University who has written about gender in science fiction.)

Hough lamented that Twitter users had so harshly criticized a book they had not read.

“They call it ‘call-out culture,’” she wrote on Substack, “because bullying is wrong, unless your target is someone you don’t like, for social justice reasons, of course.”

In an email Monday, Newman declined to comment on her forthcoming book but confirmed Hough’s account of their friendship. “She’s also a person of great integrity and decency,” added Newman. “And she’s an amazing writer whose book deserves all the awards.”

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Health

New antibody can stop all COVID strains, variants like delta, lambda

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A team of researchers may have found an antibody that can neutralize all known novel coronavirus strains, including the developing variants.

GlaxoSmithKline and Vir Biotechnology recently conducted a huge collaborative study by scientists and developed a new antibody therapy, called Sotrovimab. During the project, they discovered a new natural antibody “that has remarkable breadth and efficacy,” according to the Berkeley Lab.

The scientists reportedly discovered a new antibody, called S309, which “neutralizes all known SARS-CoV-2 strains — including newly emerged mutants that can now ‘escape’ from previous antibody therapies — as well as the closely related original SARS-CoV virus,” according to a press release from the Berkeley Lab.

Structural biologist Jay Nix, who was involved with the project, said the antibody can potentially stop all coronaviruses similar to COVID-19.

The researchers want to do more tests with the antibodies using hamsters. They hope to give it prophylactically, meaning through treatments.

“And, due to the unique binding site on mutation-resistant part of the virus, it may well be more difficult for a new strain to escape,” he said in a release from Berkeley Lab.

The information about the antibody was published in the journal Nature.

A similar study recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine said that researchers found “high-level, broad-spectrum” antibodies in blood samples from SARS outbreak survivors in 2003, as I explained for the Deseret News.

Back in 2020, scientists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine discovered “the smallest biological molecule” that “completely and specifically neutralizes” the novel coronavirus, too, as I wrote for the Deseret News.

The scientists developed a drug, called Ab8, that would be used as a preventative measure against COVID-19, according to Fox News.

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Health

Study suggests lambda variant could evade COVID-19 vaccine protection

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What you need to know about the Covid Lambda variant

Dr. Purvi Parikh, an immunologist with Allergy & Asthma Network who is also a co-investigator with the COVID vaccine trials joined Good Day LA to talk about lambda variant.

LOS ANGELES – Several mutations of the deadly novel coronavirus are drawing attention and causing serious concern among medical experts over their transmissibility, and a new study from Japanese researchers suggests that an already-circulating variant could penetrate the protection of current COVID-19 vaccines. 

While the delta variant ravages much of the U.S., driving up cases and hospitalizations mostly among the unvaccinated, another variant known as lambda is devastating parts of South America, and scientists now worry it could neutralize or evade antibodies generated by vaccines.

In a not-yet-peer-reviewed study published on July 28 on bioRxiv by researchers in Japan, researchers said the lambda variant currently driving cases in 26 countries — including Chile, Peru, Argentina and Ecuador — is proving to contain as much viral material as the delta variant, thanks to a similar mutation. 

In April 2021, authorities in Peru said 81% of the country’s COVID-19 cases were associated with the lambda variant. 

Researchers noted in the bioRxiv study that the “vaccination rate in Chile is relatively high; the percentage of the people who received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine was [about] 60%.” 

But “nevertheless, a big COVID-19 surge has occurred in Chile in Spring 2021, suggesting that the lambda variant is proficient in escaping from the antiviral immunity elicited by vaccination,” study authors warned. 

RELATED: COVID-19 lambda variant: What to know about the coronavirus strain

“In addition to increasing viral infectivity, the delta variant exhibits higher resistance to the vaccine-induced neutralization. Similarly, here we showed that the lambda variant equips not only increased infectivity but also resistance against antiviral immunity,” study authors added.

A separate study published on July 7 and led by Chinese epidemiologist Jing Lu at the Guangdong Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Guangzhou, China found that the delta variant contains 1,000 times more viral material than that of the original novel coronavirus variant that infected much of the global population during the onset of the global pandemic last year.

Health officials from the World Health Organization said earlier this month not much is known about the projected impact of the lambda variant, but there is the potential of increased transmissibility or possible increased resistance to neutralizing antibodies compared to the original COVID-19 strain. Researchers said more studies are needed to understand the variant.

Early studies, including one from New York University published July 2, suggest lambda may be a bit resistant to antibodies produced by the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, but concluded it is not resistant enough “to cause a significant loss of protection against infection.”

“So far we have seen no indication that the lambda variant is more aggressive,” Jairo Mendez-Rico, a WHO virologist, told Deutsche Welle. “It is possible that it may exhibit higher infection rates, but we don’t yet have enough reliable data to compare it to gamma or delta.”

RELATED: US in ‘much worse situation’ with COVID-19 pandemic than expected, experts say

WHO officials first officially identified the lambda variant, or C.37, on June 14, 2020, pointing to a case in Peru that was documented in December 2020.

The rise of these concerning variants that appear to evade the protection of the vaccines comes as breakthrough cases continue to rise among vaccinated individuals. 

As of July 26, the CDC reported that 163 million Americans had been vaccinated for COVID-19. Out of those inoculations in the same timeframe, 6,587 Covid-19 breakthrough cases occurred that either resulted in hospitalization or death.

While hospitalizations and deaths from breakthrough cases appear to be extremely rare, the CDC is not currently tracking all breakthrough cases, leaving a huge gap of data that could allow medical experts to better understand the impact of breakthrough cases on the pandemic.

In an email to FOX TV Stations on Aug. 3, a CDC spokesperson said, “On May 1, 2021, CDC transitioned the national reporting system to focus on vaccine breakthrough cases in patients who were hospitalized or died. This shift will help maximize the quality of the data collected on cases of greatest clinical and public health importance.”

Despite the emergence of breakthrough cases, the CDC said vaccines are still the most effective tool at fighting the spread of the disease and it is critical that all people who are eligible get vaccinated as contagious and potentially deadlier mutations of the virus continue to emerge and circulate.

RELATED: UK scientists say variant that can evade COVID-19 vaccines ‘almost certain’

The July study on the lambda variant’s ability to spread despite vaccine effectiveness came as scientists out of the United Kingdom warned weeks before that it is “almost certain” a new COVID-19 variant will emerge that will render current vaccines ineffective. 

A U.K. advisory group published a research and analysis paper on the long-term evolution of COVID-19 on July 26. The paper explores several hypothetical, but highly likely, scenarios of what humanity can expect in the long-term from COVID-19 based on current trends and data. 

Scientists wrote that since the eradication of the novel coronavirus is “unlikely,” there are sure to be new variants that emerge and infect the population at large. 

As cases continue to rise and demand for vaccinations wanes, medical experts worry it may take much longer than expected for the world to see an end to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

In a Zoom webinar for Brown University, medical experts discussed the prevalence of new variants of the novel coronavirus and what it means for the world’s attempts to return to normalcy.

“I did not think that we’d be at a point where a third of American adults would basically look at the last year and a half, look at the fact that we have these incredible vaccines that are available and widely available, easy to get, free, and say ‘no thank you,’” said Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health.

Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania and a member of the FDA Vaccine Advisory Panel, said he’s amazed at how much of society appears to have returned to normal behaviors despite the pandemic being far from over. He said last year most people were “good about masks and social distancing,” and now “there’s 40,000 people at a Phillies game and people are having weddings and birthday parties and we’re just getting together much more than we did last year.”

Jha estimates that the U.S. could see a peak of the virus in late August and into September, followed by a decline that he thinks will vary from state to state.
 

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Health

Tokyo Deliberately Left Deadly New Lambda COVID Variant Out of Press Briefings During Olympics

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On July 20, three days before the Olympics began, a woman in her 30s from Peru tested positive for COVID-19 at Haneda Airport in Tokyo and was immediately flagged as a probable carrier of the highly infectious Lambda variant of COVID-19.

However, The Daily Beast has learned that Japan’s Ministry of Health, after making a conclusive determination on the identity of the variant, omitted any mention of the new case from its regular press releases on July 30 and Aug. 6.

The passenger’s samples were promptly sequenced and submitted to an international influenza virus database as a Lambda variant on July 26. But Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare deliberately left the information out of its press briefings and releases, according to employees of the ministry who spoke with The Daily Beast; we also obtained documents released to the Japanese media. The variant, first detected in Peru in December 2020, is highly infectious and potentially resistant to vaccines.

The Aug. 6 press briefing.

Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Labor

“We worked around the clock to make the call and sound the alarm, and the Ministry kept quiet—and had no intentions of announcing until today—when the minister of health had his scheduled press conference,” an employee of Japan’s National Institute of Infectious Diseases (NIID) told The Daily Beast on the condition of anonymity. Norihisa Tamura, the current minister, regularly briefs members of the ministry press club on relevant issues. The discovery of new COVID-19 variants in Japan is typically announced at a press conference.

According to the NIID employee, since early July, Japan had been strengthening its ability to detect variants at all airports in the country. On July 17, the Lambda variant was placed on a watch list due to concerns from preliminary scientific reports that the variant could be highly transmissible and possibly vaccine resistant. On July 20, when the passenger from Peru tested positive for COVID-19, alarm bells went off.

“In Peru, close to 90 percent of all new COVID-19 cases are due to the Lambda variant,” the employee said. “When the sample came and we knew where the woman was from, logically we were already looking for the Lambda variant and expected to find it.”

The lab work on the samples obtained from the traveler at the airport was made a top priority and by July 25, the results were conclusive. On July 26, three days into the Olympics, the genome sequence of the detected Lambda variant was submitted to GISAID, an international database of influenza viruses including SARS-Cov-2 variants.

GISAID, in response to queries from The Daily Beast, confirmed in an email, “[The] sequence has been submitted to GISAID on July 26 which indicates a very fast turnaround time by Japan’s National Institute of Infectious Diseases.”

“Well, it’s nice to see GISAID recognize our fast turnaround, but I wonder why we rushed when the information was just going to be held back until a convenient time. We are scientists, not politicians, so I can only speculate on the reasons,” the NIID source said.

The Daily Beast reporters working on this story first published an article on the discovery of the Lambda variant in Japan, on Aug. 6, at 12:06 a.m. Japan time. The Ministry of Health issued an announcement to the press on the morning of Aug. 6 listing all the COVID-19 variants detected in Japan at airport quarantine centers. But the press release only highlighted the detection of the Alpha and Delta variant from international travelers. Furthermore, the list of dates including passenger information begins from July 21, the day after the Lambda variant was detected, completely omitting the variant from the timely report.

There is no mention of a female traveler in her 30s residing in Peru testing positive for COVID-19 at Haneda. The reports on the findings of variants at Japan’s airports are released on a nearly weekly basis. A subsequent report released on July 30 also omitted any mention of the Lambda variant being discovered.

The Ministry of Health only publicly admitted to finding the Lambda variant on the evening of Aug. 6, after repeated inquiries from The Daily Beast. The ministry has asserted that since the individual carrying the variant was spotted and isolated at the airport, the variant has not “landed” in the country.

Japan’s Ministry of Health has a long history of cover-ups and altering data to suit the needs of the ruling administration.

In the 1980s, the ministry suppressed reports that unheated blood products were transmitting AIDS to hemophilia patients and did not urge the use of safe alternative products that were readily available. The courts found that the reports were suppressed to benefit a Japanese pharmaceutical company, and former ministry officials involved in the scandal were convicted of criminal negligence resulting in injury and death in 2000.

Most recently, in 2018, as then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, of the Liberal Democratic Party, was pushing forward a labor reform bill, ministry officials submitted falsified data to the Japanese parliament, which supported Abe’s assertions that discretionary labor would benefit workers. Some of the work data compiled by the Ministry of Health showed employees working more than 24 hours in a single day. The government had to retract the data, and several ministry officials were disciplined. A senior secretary of the prime minister had met with ministry officials around the period that the data was tampered with.

The Ministry of Health had not yet replied to questions from The Daily Beast at the time of publication.

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Health

Vaccine-resistant lambda variant is in the US

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A new coronavirus mutation known as the lambda variant that is thought to have increased resistance to vaccines has appeared in the United States.

Also known as C.37, the lambda variant was first discovered in Peru in November 2020. Peru has been one of the countries hit hardest by the pandemic, with 595 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 people, the highest in the world. Peru has relied heavily on the Chinese vaccine known as Sinopharm, which is 79% effective at preventing hospitalizations. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are 94% effective against hospitalization.

The lambda variant has since spread to eight countries in South America and 41 countries around the world, according to global science initiative GISAID.

“There are currently more than 1,300 Lambda (C.37) sequences in the U.S. as of August 4, 2021, and the Lambda variant has been identified in 44 states,” a spokesperson with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently told Newsweek.

VACCINATION MAY PROVIDE MORE PROTECTION THAN COVID-19 NATURAL IMMUNITY, CDC STUDY FINDS

Researchers from Japan have found that the lambda variant contains three mutations on its spike proteins that make it more infectious than the original virus. Two other mutations on its spike proteins make it about 150% more resistant to antibodies produced by the vaccines. A spike protein is the part of a virus that enables it to attach to a human cell.

The research has not yet been peer-reviewed.

The World Health Organization has classified the lambda variant as a “variant of interest,” meaning that it is suspected to be either more contagious than the original strain or more able to evade vaccines. When more evidence emerges that a variant does either of those things, it will be reclassified as a “variant of concern.”

The researchers from Japan are worried that classifying the lambda variant as a variant of interest will minimize the potential threat.

“Because the Lambda variant is a VOI, it might be considered that this variant is not an ongoing threat compared to the pandemic VOCs,” the researcher wrote. “However, because the Lambda variant is relatively resistant to the vaccine-induced [antibodies], it might be possible that this variant is feasible to cause breakthrough infection.”

Yet, it does not seem likely that the lambda variant will spread as widely as the delta variant has.

Those 1,300 confirmed cases of the lambda variant in the U.S. amount to less than 0.2% of new cases. By contrast, the CDC says the delta variant now accounts for 93% of new cases. Thus far, the CDC has not classified the lambda variant as either a variant of interest or concern.

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Marie Van Kerkhove, an epidemiologist who is the technical lead of the COVID-19 response team at the WHO, recently said that the lambda variant doesn’t seem to “take off once it’s reported in a country.”

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Tags: Healthcare, Coronavirus, News, World Health Organization, CDC, Healthcare, Japan, Peru, Science

Original Author: David Hogberg

Original Location: Vaccine-resistant lambda variant is in the US

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Health

Lambda coronavirus variant: What experts are learning

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The Lambda variant was first identified in Peru in December. The World Health Organization designates Delta as a “variant of concern.” Lambda is designated a degree lower as a “variant of interest.”

“There are variants arising every day — if a variant can be defined as new mutations,” he said. “The question is, do those mutations give the virus some sort of advantage, which of course is to human disadvantage? The answer in Lambda is yes.”

What is known about Lambda

There is a lot left to learn about Lambda.

The variant is not nearly as worrisome as the Delta variant in the US, which has been driving a rise in cases nationwide, but early studies suggest that it has mutations that make it more transmissible than the original strain of the coronavirus.

“Lambda has mutations that are concerning but this variant remains quite rare in the US despite being around for several months,” Dr. Preeti Malani, chief health officer in the division of infectious diseases at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, wrote in an email on Friday.

“It’s difficult to know for certain how transmissible Lambda is and how well vaccines work. So far, it seems that Lambda is more transmissible than the original SARS-CoV-2 virus,” which is similar to Delta and other variants, wrote Malani, an expert with the Infectious Diseases Society of America. SARS-CoV-2 is the name of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19.

“Thankfully studies suggest that the currently available vaccines remain protective. We have learned during the pandemic that things can change quickly, so controlling spread of COVID-19 in general will help manage Lambda,” Malani wrote. “As long as there is uncontrolled spread of SARS-CoV-2, we will see more variants in the future. The only way out is widespread vaccination to control spread and prevent further mutation of SARS-CoV-2. It’s a race between getting enough of the world vaccinated and the development of new variants that are less responsive to counter measures.”

So far, data remain split on how well vaccines protect against the Lambda variant, and scientists say they need to study this more.

In July, researchers wrote in a lab study that they found some evidence that people who got the single-dose Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine might benefit from a booster dose to better protect them from new variants of the coronavirus, including the Lambda variant. The study was done in the lab and does not reflect real-world effects of the vaccine — and it’s published online as a preprint to the server biorxiv.org, meaning it was not subject to careful peer review.

Nathaniel Landau of the New York University Grossman School of Medicine and colleagues said their tests of blood taken from vaccinated volunteers shows that at least some of the newly emerging variants may evade the protection offered by a single dose of Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen vaccine. A boost of a second dose of J&J vaccine, or even with Moderna’s or Pfizer’s, might help, the researchers reported.

In the study, the variants Beta, Delta, Delta plus and Lambda showed only “modest” resistance against antibodies elicited by the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna coronavirus vaccines, suggesting the vaccines still work.

A separate pre-print paper, posted last week to the online server biorxiv.org, found in lab experiments that three mutations — called the RSYLTPGD246-253N, 260 L452Q and F490S — found in the spike protein of the Lambda variant may confer resistance to immunity induced by vaccines, but more research is needed. The paper, authored by scientists in Japan, has not been published yet in a peer-reviewed journal.
“Two additional mutations, T76I and L452Q, help make Lambda highly infectious. Currently, the Lambda variant has been flagged as a ‘Variant of Interest’ by the WHO. We do not know yet whether this variant is more concerning than the Delta variant,” pharmacist and epidemiologists Dr. Ravina Kullar, who is an expert with the Infectious Diseases Society of America, wrote in an email on Friday.

“There needs to be extensive genomic surveillance studies that are done to assess how the vaccines’ efficacy is affected by the Lambda variant,” Kullar wrote. Until Covid-19 cases overall decrease, “the best way to prevent the emergence of more variants is getting fully vaccinated, not traveling internationally, and following strict infection prevention measures including wearing a face mask, physically distancing from others, and not attending large social gatherings.”

A game of ‘Russian roulette’

Vaccines are vital to counter new coronavirus variants, such as Lambda, which might remain rare in the US but is associated with “substantive rates of community transmission in multiple” countries in the region, according to the WHO.

Overall, Poland, the Mayo Clinic professor, warned that the more people don’t wear masks and remain unvaccinated, the more likely additional variants will emerge in the future — including one that might evade vaccines completely. Because as the coronavirus continues to jump from person to person, with each new infection, it changes a little bit — just like any virus does — and those changes or mutations could either be benign, or make it more easily transmissible and dangerous.

Poland called it playing “Russian roulette” to allow a virus to spread freely with no mitigations, such as wearing masks or getting vaccinated.

“We will continue to develop more and more variants, and eventually, one or more of these variants will learn how to evade vaccine-induced immunity,” Poland said. “And if that’s true, we will start all over again.”

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Health

New COVID variants Epsilon, Lambda may be resistant to vaccines, early lab studies show

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The Epsilon and Lambda variants of COVID-19 are “variants of interest,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and early studies show they have developed a resistance to vaccines.

Japanese researchers found the Lambda variant, which was initially discovered in Peru and is now spreading throughout South America, is highly transmissible and more resistant to vaccines than the initial COVID-19 strain.

The researchers warned in a paper posted July 28 that has yet to be peer reviewed that Lambda’s label as a “variant of interest” instead of a “variant of concern” might downplay the growing threat of the strain.

Meanwhile, the Epsilon variant that was initially discovered in California in 2020 is spreading in Pakistan and is proving to be resistant to vaccines, according to researchers.

Health authorities issued an alert after they discovered five cases of the Epsilon variant in Lahore, Pakistan. Medical experts there believe the vaccine-resistant strain is putting vaccinated people as well as unvaccinated people at risk, adding that the strain is just as transmissible as the Delta variant.

Despite these early studies, previous studies have shown vaccines, including those available in the United States, work against “variants of concern,” such as the Delta variant. The vaccines also prevent serious illness, hospitalization and death in most breakthrough cases where a fully vaccinated person tests positive for the coronavirus.

For example, a U.K. study published in May showed two doses of the Pfizer vaccine were 88% effective at preventing against symptomatic infection of the Delta variant and 96% effective against preventing hospitalization.

Related stories about the coronavirus:

Lambda variant of COVID: Where is it? Do vaccines work against it? Here’s what to know

What is the Delta variant of COVID? Do vaccines work against it? Here’s what to know

Is a runny nose a symptom of the Delta variant of COVID?

Is a sore throat a symptom of the Delta variant of COVID?

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World

Lambda variant shows vaccine resistance – study

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The Lambda variant of the coronavirus, first identified in Peru and now spreading in South America, is highly infectious and more resistant to vaccines than the original version of the virus the emerged from Wuhan, China, Japanese researchers have found. 
In a paper posted on Wednesday on bioRxiv ahead of peer review, the researchers warn that with Lambda being labeled a “Variant of Interest” by the World Health Organization, rather than a “Variant of Concern,” people might not realize it is a serious ongoing threat. 

In laboratory experiments, they found that three mutations in Lambda’s spike protein, known as RSYLTPGD246-253N, 260 L452Q and F490S, help it resist neutralization by vaccine-induced antibodies. 

Two additional mutations, T76I and L452Q, help make Lambda highly infectious, they found.

Although it is not clear yet whether this variant is more dangerous than the Delta now threatening populations in many countries, senior researcher Kei Sato of the University of Tokyo believes “Lambda can be a potential threat to the human society.”



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Health

The ‘Lambda’ Variant Is Now Found in 29 Countries. Here’s What We Know About It

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Peru has the highest number of COVID deaths per capita, by far. For every 100,000 of the population, 596 have died of COVID. This is almost double the next hardest-hit country, Hungary, which has 307 deaths per 100,000 people.

 

There are many reasons Peru has fared so badly in the pandemic. They include a poorly funded, under-prepared healthcare system with too few ICU beds; slow vaccine rollout; limited testing capacity; a large informal economy (few people could afford not to work); and overcrowded housing.

The country was also beset by the lambda variant. Initially reported in the capital, Lima, in August 2020, by April 2021 it accounted for 97 percent of all sequences in Peru.

Lambda has now gone globetrotting. According to a recent World Health Organization (WHO) report, it has been found in 29 countries. The report states: “Lambda has been associated with substantive rates of community transmission in multiple countries, with rising prevalence over time concurrent with increased COVID-19 incidence.”

On June 14 2021, WHO declared lambda a “global variant of interest”. Public Health England followed suit on June 23, designating it a “variant under investigation” because of its “international expansion and several notable mutations”.

Of the eight confirmed cases of lambda in the UK, most have been linked to overseas travel.

What the evidence shows

A variant of interest is one that has mutations that are predicted or known to affect things such as transmissibility (how easily the virus spreads), severity of disease, ability to evade immunity from past infections or vaccines, or confound diagnostic tests.

Many scientists speak of lambda’s “unusual combination” of mutations, which may make it more transmissible.

Lambda has seven mutations on the spike protein, the mushroom-shaped projections on the outer shell of the virus that help it latch onto our cells and invade them. These mutations may make it easier for lambda to bind to our cells and make it harder for our antibodies to latch onto the virus and neutralize it.

But it’s important to remember that neutralizing antibodies aren’t the only tool in the immune system’s toolkit – they are merely the easiest to study. T cells play a vital role too, so a handful of mutations – however unusual – might not be enough to allow lambda to dodge our immune system altogether.

So what evidence do we have that these mutations make lambda more dangerous than the original coronavirus? Very little, it turns out.

 

There are no published studies on the lambda variant and just a handful of preprints – papers that have yet to be subject to the scrutiny of other scientists (peer review) and published in a journal.

A preprint from the New York University Grossman School of Medicine looked at the effect of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines against the lambda variant and found a two-to-threefold reduction in vaccine-elicited antibodies compared with the original virus.

In the scheme of things, this is not a massive loss of neutralizing antibodies. The researchers conclude that these mRNA vaccines will probably remain protective against the lambda variant.

Researchers from the University of Chile investigated the effect of the Sinovac (also known as “CoronaVac”) vaccine against the lambda variant. They also found a threefold reduction in neutralizing antibodies compared with the original variant.

The fact that these two studies found that neutralization is at least partially retained is promising, not least because this is only one facet of the immune response elicited by vaccination.

According to PHE’s latest “risk assessment” (July 8) of lambda, there is no evidence of a country where lambda has outcompeted delta. Studies are ongoing, but for now, lambda remains a variant of interest rather than a variant of concern.

Tara Hurst, Lecturer, Biomedical Science, Birmingham City University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

 

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World

Here’s what you need to know the lambda variant

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Health workers inoculate a woman in Peru.

DIEGO RAMOS | AFP | Getty Images

More than 18 months into the Covid-19 pandemic and the world is used to news of new variants of the virus by now, particularly those that have, one by one, supplanted previous versions of the disease.

Some mutations of the virus, like the alpha variant and the delta variant — discovered first in the U.K. and India, respectively — have been more transmissible than previous iterations of the virus and have gone on to dominate globally. Whenever a new variant of the coronavirus emerges, scientists watch it closely.

While the world is still contending with the rapid spread of the delta variant, which has usurped the alpha variant in terms of transmissibility and the potential to cause hospitalizations in unvaccinated people, there is now a new variant that experts are monitoring: The lambda variant.

Here’s what we know (and don’t know) about it:

What is the lambda variant?

The lambda variant, or “C.37” as the lineage has been designated, has been spreading rapidly in South America, particularly in Peru where the earliest documented samples of the virus date from August 2020.

However, it was only flagged up as a “variant of interest” by the World Health Organization on June 14 this year as cases attributed to the variant had spread noticeably.

In its report in mid-June, the WHO reported that “lambda has been associated with substantive rates of community transmission in multiple countries, with rising prevalence over time concurrent with increased Covid-19 incidence” and that more investigations would be carried out into the variant.

Where is it exactly?

The WHO noted in its June 15 report that the lambda variant had been detected in 29 countries, territories or areas in five WHO regions, although it has a stronger presence in South America.

“Authorities in Peru reported that 81% of Covid-19 cases sequenced since April 2021 were associated with Lambda. Argentina reported increasing prevalence of Lambda since the third week of February 2021, and between 2 April and 19 May 2021, the variant accounted for 37% of the Covid-19 cases sequenced,” the WHO noted.

Meanwhile, in Chile, the prevalence of lambda has increased over time, accounting for 32% of sequenced cases reported in the last 60 days, the WHO said, adding that it was co-circulating at similar rates to the gamma variant but was “out-competing” the alpha variant in the same time period.

By June 24, the lambda variant had been detected in cases in 26 countries, according to Public Health England data. This included Chile, Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, Brazil and Colombia as well as the U.S., Canada, Germany, Spain, Israel, France, the U.K. and Zimbabwe, among others.

Is it more dangerous?

The WHO and other public health bodies are trying to understand how the variant compares to other strains of the virus, including whether it could be more transmissible and more resistant to vaccines.

In mid-June, the WHO said that “lambda carries a number of mutations with suspected phenotypic implications, such as a potential increased transmissibility or possible increased resistance to neutralizing antibodies.”

Noting the specific mutations in the spike protein (some of which have been described as unusual by experts) the WHO said that: “There is currently limited evidence on the full extent of the impact associated with these genomic changes” and further studies are needed “to better understand the impact on countermeasures [against Covid-19] and to control the spread.”

It’s important to note that the lambda variant is still one step below being designated a “variant of concern” like the alpha or delta mutations. In a press conference last week, the WHO’s technical lead on Covid-19, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, was asked what would need to happen for it to change its definition of the lambda variant.

“It would become a variant of concern if it has demonstrated pathways of increased transmissibility, if it has increased severity for example or if it has some kind of impact on our countermeasures,” she said.

Do vaccines work against it?

Again, more studies are needed about the effect that the lambda variant has on vaccine efficacy, particularly on vaccines widely available in the West, such as those from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna or Oxford-AstraZeneca.

But questions have been raised in parts of South America over the effectiveness of Chinese vaccines, which have been those deployed predominantly in the region, as cases linked to the lambda variant spread and infection rates rise alongside vaccination programs. Brazil, Chile and Peru all rely heavily on Chinese Covid vaccines Sinovac or Sinopharm but vaccination rates differ wildly across South America.

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