New Delhi: More than two-and-a-half years into the coronavirus pandemic, researchers have achieved a breakthrough in their fight against a virus that keeps mutating and evading the immunity response humans develop from available vaccines.
Covid variants such as Delta and Omicron and their sub-variants continue to cause alarming new cases of the disease around the world.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Wednesday said Covid-19 deaths over the past month had surged 35%, adding 15,000 fatalities were reported in the previous week.
Now researchers claim they have discovered a vulnerability, a “weak spot”, across all variants that could help develop a more targeted anti-body treatment.
The study, which was published on Thursday, has been conducted by a joint team of researchers from Canada’s University of British Columbia – led by Dr Sriram Subramaniam, a professor at the Faculty of Medicine – and the University of Pittsburgh, US – led by Dr Mitko Dimitrov and Dr Wei Li.
It was published as a peer-reviewed article in the journal Nature Communications.