TORONTO -- As coronavirus variants pose a threat to declining infection numbers in Canada, another kind of anomaly has been identified.
Researchers in New Mexico recently discovered what is believed to be the first recorded 鈥渞ecombination event鈥 of the COVID-19 pandemic between a variant of SARS-CoV-2 that originated in the U.K. and another from California.
Though a less common occurrence than the variants that have been making headlines for months, recombination is a naturally occurring process documented with all coronaviruses. The hybrid variants don鈥檛 necessarily spell increased danger, said Dr. Sumon Chakrabarti, an infectious disease expert in Mississauga, Ont.
鈥淧eople think that mutation is like X-Men and you鈥檙e getting something that鈥檚 going to be a super virus. But that鈥檚 not the case,鈥 he told CTVNews.ca over the phone on Wednesday.
While it鈥檚 true that a 鈥渞ecombinant鈥 could result in a more lethal, antibody-resistant hybrid, the reverse is also possible. 鈥淭here are sometimes recombinants that occur that are at a cost to the virus,鈥 said Chakrabarti. It could be like an athlete holding two powerful baseball bats, he said: They might hit a 500-foot home run with just one bat, but the ball won't get very far if they're holding both.
It鈥檚 unclear how much of a threat the new recombinant could be as the COVID-19 pandemic continues, having infected nearly 110 million people worldwide. But the combination of the more transmissible B.1.1.7 variant from the U.K. with the B.1.429 variant from California, which is reportedly able to resist some antibodies, is worrisome to epidemiologists. Earlier this month, computational biologist and HIV researcher 鈥婦r. Bette Korber of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico briefed researchers on the recombination evidence at a webinar hosted by the New York Academy of Sciences. She reportedly said that her lab has identified just a single genome among thousands, but the discovery is still important.
鈥淭his kind of event could allow the virus to have coupled a more infectious virus with a more resistant virus,鈥 she said, according to , a U.K. tech and science website.
With the emergence of more variants of the novel coronavirus, recombination may pose a bigger threat since it can occur when someone is exposed to two different strains at once. The genetic material of the two strains is 鈥渟pliced together,鈥 combining multiple mutations at once, said Chakrabarti.
鈥淲ith regular mutations, it happens from a single virus population,鈥 he told CTVNews.ca. 鈥淩ecombinant events happen when two slightly different viruses are in the same environment.鈥
But recombination doesn鈥檛 mean the world is poised to enter a new deadlier phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, the recombination could help researchers understand the evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which could inform how virologists adapt COVID-19 vaccines in the future to provide possible booster shots, as is done seasonally for other viruses like influenza, said Chakrabarti.
Recombination has been happening to some degree for the duration of the pandemic, but is only being identified now in parts of the world with the laboratory expertise to discover them, he said. Most of the time, mutations amount to small changes over time.
鈥淵ou鈥檙e unlikely to see something that鈥檚 all of a sudden going to change the face of the pandemic,鈥 he said. 鈥淓ven if you have a virus that鈥檚 more transmissible that doesn鈥檛 mean that it鈥檚 going to be transmitted across a population.鈥
There are a variety of factors that impact the transmissibility of a virus, including human behaviour, population structure and immunity levels, if a deadlier recombinant strain spreads or not.
