MUDr. Soňa Peková, Ph.D.
is 45 years old Czech molecular geneticist and virologist, chief of a private molecular genetics laboratory who became very famous in Czech Republic during the last months.She is one of the biggest Czech experts in the spread of a new type of coronavirus.
The laboratory were she is chief of was among the first ones to test people for Covid19.

                                     Soňa Peková -Czech molecular geneticist. She studied general medicine at LF UK in Hradec Králové. She worked at the Institute of molecular genetics of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and the Institute of Hematology and blood transfusion. In 2006, she won at 1. Faculty of Medicine UK doctorate in Molecular Biology, Genetics and virology.
As a scientist with 20 years of experience she gave several interviews on the coronavirus problem. Here I bring you the main ideas and opinions of this scientist.
Doctor Soňa Peková says coronavirus may have originated in laboratory way and accidentally escaped since some of its gene characteristics correspond to this. Soňa Peková does not consider that it was deliberate, which induces the possibility of creating a targeted biological weapons. Rather, she says, it is an accidental escape that occurred accidentally.
 A recent study in the prestigious American Journal of Nature excludes this.
Peková comments to this:
"It was published in Nature Medicine, one of the most respected journals. It's an excellent, very detailed article. Just dedicated solely to the structural parts of the virus and even the word makes no mention of the regulatory areas where, in my opinion, changes have occurred.
Why do not I exclude other than natural origin? Viruses are not an infinite amount. So when we have a patient with some symptoms, we're pretty good at targeting which virus it might be. When are the symptoms of one, I guess it will be flu viruses when he has diarrhea, let's go after other viruses, skin diseases, we're looking for herpes viruses.
Similarly, we expect that if a patient is infected with coronavirus, it will somehow look like it. Usually it's a runny nose, maximally light catarrh of the upper respiratory tract, but it will pass in a week. But this coronavirus everything out and creates a new category of disease, which is at least special."
     Her experience shows that this coronavirus is extremely biologically variable. They multiply very rapidly, which is why the quantity is so high, but once it's a tribe of the virus that doesn't do much to humans, and the second time it kills. It looks like there was only one type in the beginning. Thanks to its huge ability to create so many different copies of himself, and due to the fact that it's also a lot of the fallible genome, this virus make a big number of errors. And  these faulty replicas of the virus  cause it to behave aggressively, on a scale from zero (this is a lamb) to a hundred (this is a killer). In the interview for Czech radio Peková said : "The virus behaves strangely, does not develop good immunity, cases of reinfection are known. It has a lot of characteristics that we have not seen before in nature. "

About testing
To the question what are the types of tests for coronavirus covid-19 and what are they different from each other Soňa Peková says:
"There are two kinds. One is based on a direct sign of the ribonucleic acid virus, which is also called PCR. This should be used when scanning the population for the presence of the virus, so we know where we are moving positive patients.
The second is based on an antibody ID, and it is suitable for a recovery period when the disease has already occurred and we are wondering if the patient has encountered the disease. That's why we're measuring his antibodies."
As for the so called speed tests, when the results are known in the order of hours, she explains: 
"These are not tests to detect those infected without symptoms or those who have encountered the virus in relatively recent times and therefore have not yet developed antibodies. This is called a serological window, such a test will be false negative. This can take different lengths of time, we do not yet know exactly, it depends on the immune system of the infected. Some people who have impaired immunity will develop these antibodies for about three weeks. It could also take a week. But it's certainly in days and weeks, not hours. Thus, the antibody test is fast, inexpensive and convenient, but not for the capture of infected or bacillonosers in the population."
Under ideal conditions this speed test after several needed steps are done in 4 hours.
                                           

About vaccination
The high ability to mutate is clearly bad news for vaccine development. Could that mean it may never be developed?
To this fact Peková says:
"Unfortunately, it can happen. It's similar to a flu shot. It also happens that the tribe that comes next year will be a little different than the one this year. The Virus can, figuratively speaking, change the coat. He comes in red for the first time, and I beat him. But then he mutates, comes in a blue coat, I don't recognize him, and I have to make antibodies from scratch."

Prognosis
 To the theories that the virus will gradually fade when it becomes dangerous roughly like a common cold this scientist says that by mutating a lot, some of its dangers will certainly weaken. But some of the mutation can also make the virus stronger.  Both are possible...

About children and Covid19
Why are there almost no cases of coronavirus infection on the part of children?
"I have my theory, see if it's confirmed." she says. " In virology, there is a phenomenon called the exclusion of superinfection. It is simply that if the cell is infected with a virus of the same group and that it is harmless, so another virus, much more dangerous, will not get in. The virus that gets into it first tells the other one: sorry, this is busy. Harmless coronaviruses have children full of upper respiratory tract, this is the cause of such sparse noodles near the nose."

What does coronavirus covid-19 differ from other viruses?
" I think in the regulatory area. There he has different sequences than the coronavirus from the bat, however the body of the virus certainly comes from it. He has a very high replication activity and that's why he's so contagious. This is also related to the ability to mutate in time, there are still tribes that we have not seen before."

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I wish everybody to stay healhty  

                                                                        Margaret

I have compiled this blog from diffrent sources published on Czech web - interviews for newspapers, radio, Wikipedia etc.