Is It Safe to Vaccinate a Viral Variant?

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Scientists are frantically working to try to better understand the properties of this virus. The question about transmissibility, that's going to be answered from epidemiology and trying to figure out how fast the virus can be passed on. We should also say that often when we talk about things on cronopod, we're talking about changing stories. And so it is right for scientists and people to be treating this with some sense of alarm. But we don't have yet, is clear answers about what any of this means.

In a quickly developing story a new variant, first detected in Botswana, is triggering rapid action among researchers. The variant - currently named B.1.1.529 has more than 30 changes to the spike protein - and the concern is that these mutations may result in increased transmissibility, severity of disease or even antibody evasion.

In this episode of Coronapod, we discuss what we know so far, how scientists are searching for answers and what this could mean for the pandemic.

News: Heavily mutated coronavirus variant puts scientists on alert

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