Slack / Private Message Drop — page 739

[Andrew Rambaut] I should say that 'suboptimal' in terms of cleavage may be optimal in terms of transmission (i.e., getting the right level of viral shedding in the right tissues at the right time given the behaviour of the human population) . But no way someone would be able predict that and until you tried it you would never know. [2021-04-30 07:19:09] [Kristian Andersen] "until you tried it" - oh, but Andrew.... [2021-04-30 07:56:57] [Robert Garry] or serially passaged it on ferrets. [2021-04-30 11:40:05] [Kristian Andersen] @Andrew Rambaut - do any of you have a read on what's going on in India? I see a lot of anecdotal 'data' of vaccinated people (doctors) getting infected, but I can't get a read on how reliable that data is. With the crop of vaccines in India and B.1.617 I'm concerned, but I don't really know what to make of it - people are _much_ too quick to dismiss both the variant and breakthroughs though (with no data). [2021-04-30 12:02:41] [Andrew Rambaut] I am not sure I do know what is going on. The biggest rise we have seen in imports from India is in the B.1.617.2 lineage (which has 484E). But this isn't much in the Indian sequencing. I assume that is because their sampling is really skewed (probably geographically). [2021-04-30 12:06:40] [Kristian Andersen] Yeah, there's a massive lack of sequencing in-country. We also picked up B.1.617.2 yesterday - I think a lot of travel cases with that one (and B.1.1.7 - but may skew towards 617) [2021-04-30 12:06:50] [Kristian Andersen] And more so than I'd expect. [2021-04-30 12:37:41] [Andrew Rambaut] yes - we are getting almost all B.1.617.2 in travel cases - I assume it is big in a city that is not covered by sampling but has lots of international travel (Mumbai?) [2021-04-30 12:38:38] [Andrew Rambaut] But it shows the 'double mutant' is not what matters. It could be the P681R of course. [2021-04-30 12:41:32] [Kristian Andersen] P681R for sure - for transmissibility. However, T19R, L452R, T478K, and possibly D950N likely adding significantly to immune 'phenotype'. [2021-04-30 12:43:31] [Kristian Andersen] I wonder what Tulio has been up to... [shared file(s): Screen Shot 2021-04-30 at 12.43.07 PM.png] [2021-04-30 14:13:19] [Eddie Holmes]