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Topics Covered
- Emergence of new variants and their new evolutionarily advantageous traits
- Probability of the emergence of additional variants and a new strain of SARS-CoV-2
- Potential immune escape mechanisms of a theoretical new SARS-CoV-2 strain
- What can governments and individuals do to reduce the probability of emergence of additional variants
- Efficacy shown to date by COVID-19 vaccines and their projected impact in controlling the pandemic
- Update on current COVID-19 treatments (including convalescent antibody therapy, Remdisivir and dexamethasone) and the importance of the time window for their administration
Biography
Ralph Baric is Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the School of Medicine and Professor of Epidemiology at Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Dr. Baric’s research specializes in coronaviruses and emerging infections such as Zika virus. Most of the research in the Baric Lab uses coronaviruses as models to study the genetics of RNA virus transcription, replication, persistence and cross-species transmission. In 2017, Dr. Baric was included in the Clarivate Analytics’ Highly Cited Researchers list, which recognizes researchers from around the world who publish the most widely cited papers in their field.
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Talk Citation
Baric, R. (2021, February 24). COVID-19 epidemiology and variants: new challenges and future of the pandemic [Audio file]. In The Biomedical & Life Sciences Collection, Henry Stewart Talks. Retrieved June 10, 2023, from https://hstalks.com/bs/4580/.Export Citation (RIS)
Publication History
Financial Disclosures
- Prof. Ralph Baric has not informed HSTalks of any commercial/financial relationship that it is appropriate to disclose.
Audio Interview
COVID-19 epidemiology and variants: new challenges and future of the pandemic
Published on February 24, 2021
18 min
Other Talks in the Series: Interviews on Covid-19
Transcript
0:00
Interviewer: Professor Ralph Baric, thank you very much for taking
the time to do this interview with us today to further
update us on the recent findings regarding
the epidemiology of the ongoing SARS-2 COVID-19 pandemic.
We last discussed the evolution of this pandemic back in April of last year and today, the main point of concern is not so much the virus' infection rate,
which we are controlling more or less by imposing citywide lock-downs,
but rather the emergence of new variants.
What are some of the most concerning variants
discovered over the past couple of months and
what phenotypic advantages have been granted by these variants' mutations?
Prof. Barric: Well, new variants have new biological properties,
and those biological properties can change the epidemiology of the expanding pandemic.
For example, the first emerging variant that was really
well-described and characterized was called D614G,
which is a fancy name for a virus that emerged most likely in Southern Europe.
It had a mutation in
the spike glycoprotein and it rapidly became the dominant strain globally.
So the question is why?
The research that has come out regarding this virus
indicates pretty clearly that it is more infectious.
It can replicate better in cells from the nasal epithelium from humans,
and in transmission models in hamsters,
it can transmit more efficiently from a donor hamster
to a recipient hamster with an airspace in between them,
so it's airborne spread.
It's also in head-to-head,
what are called competition studies,
where you infect cells with equal amounts of the ancestral virus and the new variant.
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