ACADEMIA Letters Sars-Cov-2, evolution and P1 mutation Heslley Silva, University Center of Formiga (UNIFOR/MG) and State University of Minas Gerais (UEMG) Abstract Evolution is a dynamic process, and the current pandemic gives us a dramatic glimpse of how it can occur. In Brazil, COVID-19 and the SARS-CoV-2 virus show us how natural selection manifests itself. What happened in Manaus city, due to the government’s erratic public health policy and the behavior of the population, allowed a mutation, named P1 to be selected and change the pattern of the pandemic in Brazil, with a faster transmission, a higher frequency among young people, and possibly higher mortality. It was imagined that the city would have reached the so-called herd immunity, with a high percentage of the previously infected population, the pandemic would have no way to prosper, but the evolutionary process imposed itself through a different contamination pattern of the virus. This new context will require an intense and fast vaccination campaign to face the pandemic and the emergence of mutations and their spread worldwide. Introduction Evolution is a dynamic process; major diseases have shown this phenomenon to our advantage. Malaria and AIDS, both in Africa, provided examples of how the environment is decisive. The former, one of humanity’s most significant historical scourges, allowed the selection of seemingly harmful mutations, which became positive in populations plagued by it (Hedrick, 2011). The same occurred with AIDS when mutations that led to HIV resistance were also positively selected (O’Brien et al., 2004). Would Covid-19 lead us to something similar? Unfortunately, it was the virus that evolved. Virus evolution in Brazil In Brazil, we have an important example of how the evolution of a virus can occur. In the second semester of 2020, Manaus city, the capital of the state of Amazonas, would have Academia Letters, November 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Heslley Silva, heslley@uniformg.edu.br Citation: Silva, H. (2021). Sars-Cov-2, evolution and P1 mutation. Academia Letters, Article 4023. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4023. 1 reached the so-called “herd immunity” because probably 70% of the population would already have antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, so the trend would be to control the disease, but this is not what happened (Sridhar et al., 2021). Unfortunately, the evolutionary process of the virus has continued and continues still. Virus mutations accumulated and a brand-new variant P1 emerged within a supposedly protected population. By not controlling the spread of the disease, Brazilians promoted the selection of the virus. This biological phenomenon resulted in a very different pandemic, reinfections, in younger people, at a much faster rate, apparently more severe, uncontrolled, growing, in the face of a world with declining Covid-19 numbers at that time. The P1 mutation, a more aggressive strain with 17 mutations, including three in the spike protein, provided a shift in the transmission pattern in Amazonas state (Faria et al., 2021), as shown in the graph from daily state health data. The evolutionary process of the virus caused an unprecedented rise in the number of deaths and severe cases (Sabino et al., 2021), further accentuated from the ineffective reaction of the Federal and State governments, which instead of sending respirators and vaccines, sent drugs without efficacy on COVID-19. Meanwhile, Brazil flirted with the danger of the emergence of new variants, possibly worse. For now, vaccines seem to be effective against this variant (Sofra, 2021), but evolution continues its march. The P1 variant continued to circulate increasingly in the country Academia Letters, November 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Heslley Silva, heslley@uniformg.edu.br Citation: Silva, H. (2021). Sars-Cov-2, evolution and P1 mutation. Academia Letters, Article 4023. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4023. 2 amidst a partially vaccinated population. The herd immunity, desired by President Bolsonaro (”the best vaccine is the virus itself”), failed and propitiated this tragedy in Manaus, and after his erratic vaccine policy, his speech in favour of social interaction and against masks, may lead the country and the world in a new and terrible pandemic wave (Silva, 2021b). Evolution has happened, happens, and will continue to happen (Gould, 1981). A phenomenon seems to have occurred that still needs to be dimensioned in Brazil and worldwide (Silva, 2020). Parallel to the evolution of the virus, there was also a supposed resistance among humans, since the Brazilian population, hit by an intense wave of the disease in the first half of 2021, ended up being strongly exposed to variant P1 (Taylor, 2021), later named “Gama”, seems to have somehow protected itself from the new variable that worried and worries the whole world, delta. Several countries worldwide have suffered from this new delta variant, many with high vaccination coverage, such as Israel (Barda et al., 2021). Similarly, some European countries with high levels of vaccine denialists have suffered from new outbreaks. However, Brazil proved to be less vulnerable to this new strain, in a process that still needs to be understood epidemiologically and evolutionarily. Questions about Africa Perhaps the way the pandemic occurred in Africa points us toward understanding the evolution of the virus and humans (and their immune defences) in the face of the COVID19 pandemic. We still need to understand why COVID-19 spread so differently across the African continent (Maeda et al., 2021). Considering several overpopulated cities, with extreme poverty in various regions, and deficient health systems, it is difficult to understand the reason for such low pandemic numbers. Several hypotheses are put forward, but a possible explanation comes from the fact that the inhabitants of this region would have already been exposed to so many diseases (Uwishema et al., 2021) that there could be a natural resistance coming from this exposure and a cruel natural selection. However, only time and much research will be able to explain this differentiated pandemic condition in Africa. Understanding how these phenomena occurred will allow us to be better prepared for the next pandemics that could, and should, arise in the future, especially considering the way we deal with the environment today (Barouki et al., 2021). Currently It is important to update events in Brazil, a country strongly marked by the government’s ineptitude in tackling COVID-19 and with denialism, by the prescription of drugs without efficacy and risk potential, that reaches even doctors (Silva, 2021a). Nevertheless, at the end of 2021, the country begins to reap the fruits of a vaccination campaign, which is successful despite the government and some health professionals disseminating false news regarding immunizers. Curiously, even with all this environment opposite to the proper fight against the Academia Letters, November 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Heslley Silva, heslley@uniformg.edu.br Citation: Silva, H. (2021). Sars-Cov-2, evolution and P1 mutation. Academia Letters, Article 4023. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4023. 3 disease, the Brazilian population is very favorable to immunization, with little relevance of the anti-vaccine movement in the country (although growing) (Sato, 2018). The sharp drop in the number of deaths and cases, with a crossover of data, as the number of vaccinated people increases, demonstrates how harmful and deadly denialism has been to the country. If vaccination had occurred faster, coupled with distancing measures boycotted by the Bolsonaro government (Silva, 2021c), the number of victims would surely have been much lower. Conclusion However, it is important to consider that the evolution of the virus, and its mutations, will continue. It is therefore urgent to vaccinate as many people as possible as soon as possible to prevent vaccination from creating additional evolutionary pressure on the non-immunized or partially immunized and the emergence of new variants. 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