The COVID-19 pandemic affected the world for several years, causing a significant number of deaths.
In the United States, the winter of 2020-2021 was particularly deadly, with 250,000 people losing their lives to the virus.
The following year, the situation worsened, and the death toll increased to 330,000.
However, from August 2022 to March 2023, something unexpected happened—the number of COVID-19-related deaths dropped dramatically to just 80,000.
This sharp decline marked the abrupt end of the pandemic. Interestingly, this change couldn’t be fully explained by vaccines alone, as they had been available since early 2021.
Recent research published in The European Physical Journal B offers a new explanation for this sudden drop in COVID-19 deaths.
Marcelo Moret from CIMATEC in Brazil and James Phillips from Rutgers University in New Jersey conducted a study that explores how changes in the virus’s spike protein might have played a crucial role.
The spike protein is a key part of the COVID-19 virus. It sticks out from the virus’s surface and helps the virus enter human cells by attaching to specific receptors on cell surfaces.
When the virus mutates, these spike proteins can change, sometimes making the virus more infectious or, in some cases, less deadly.
In their study, Moret and Phillips focused on the relationship between these mutations and the number of deaths caused by COVID-19. They discovered that a particular change, known as a phase transition, occurred in the spike protein’s molecular structure.
This transition is similar to the way materials change from solid to liquid or gas in physics. This change in the spike protein happened in new strains of the omicron variant, which emerged in 2023 and had just five additional mutations compared to the original omicron variant.
The researchers believe that this phase transition altered how the virus’s spike protein binds to receptors in the upper respiratory tract—the passages in the nose, mouth, and throat. This change made it less likely for the virus to cause severe infections, leading to fewer deaths.
Moret and Phillips’ findings not only help us understand why the COVID-19 pandemic ended so suddenly but also provide valuable insights into how future pandemics might evolve. Their work suggests that monitoring changes in a virus’s spike protein could be crucial in predicting and managing future outbreaks.
Further research will help confirm these theories and improve our preparedness for pandemics in the future.
If you care about COVID, please read studies about Vitamin D deficiency linked to severe COVID-19, and how diets could help manage post-COVID syndrome.
For more health information, please see recent studies about new evidence on rare blood clots after COVID-19 vaccination, and results showing zinc could help reduce COVID-19 infection risk.
Source: KSR.
