Full coverage curbs the mutation of the Delta variant

The global coverage of the population with the Covid-19 vaccine is decisive to prevent the Delta variant, dominant in Italy as in most of the world, from accumulating mutations that make it more dangerous. This is indicated by the first data on this topic, relating to 16 countries including Italy and collected by Ting-Yu Yeh and Gregory Contreras, of the University of Maryland. The data is available online on the medRxiv platform, which welcomes articles awaiting review by the scientific community.

“We present the first evidence that the vaccination coverage rate is inversely related to the mutation frequency of the Delta variant of the SarsCoV2 virus in 16 countries,” the researchers write, and the data “strongly indicate that full vaccination against Covid-19 is crucial. to suppress emerging mutations ». In the light of these data, they note, global vaccination, i.e. of the world population, is crucial to prevent the transmission of the virus, and it is necessary to continue to adopt mitigation strategies and genomic surveillance.