The Omicron variant “it could also spell the end of the pandemic fear“Arnaldo Caruso, president of the Italian Society of Virology (Siv-Isv), tells Adnkronos Salute. Indeed, it could be the beginning of the phase awaited by the scientific community around the world: a peaceful relationship between man and Coronavirus. Why” if the new variant is confirmed really more transmissible, but less aggressive, could be the adaptation of Sars-CoV-2 that we were waiting for “. But the scenario appears realistic to those who know” the history of all viral infections, especially respiratory ones. They explode in a striking way, then slowly the guest reacts, the virus adapts and triggers a sort of coexistence between the two“.
It suits us and “it suits the virus – underlines the expert, professor of microbiology and clinical microbiology at the University of Brescia and director of the microbiology laboratory of the Asst Spedali Civili – Assuming it has intelligence, the virus is in fact convenient do not eliminate the guest by behaving aggressively, but more live with it“, become better at infecting it and exploiting the organism to multiply and continue to circulate.” The more it gives few symptoms or even no symptoms – Caruso points out – the more a virus has the possibility of transmitting itself, of continuing its course and of prevailing in the its most contagious form, faster but milder, on all the other variants “.
This is perhaps what is happening, “even if to date the available data are few and everything has yet to be verified and understood”, warns the number one of Italian virologists. And to do this, he specifies, it will be necessary to take Omicron and look inside: “A virus that enters the target organism more quickly, but is less able to make it sick, has generally modified not only the Spike protein, but also many of its internal proteins. which are the ones that play a major role in determining its aggression. And that’s where we should go looking to understand what happened, looking beyond the Spike protein “, into the ‘heart’ of Omicron.
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