Scientists Say COVID-19 Has Mutated, Is More Contagious And Spreading Across The World
The new COVID-19 strain has been identified in a new research paper by a team of scientists from the US and the UK
A new strain of the coronavirus has been found by scientists, and it seems like the novel virus strain is mutating for the worst.
The new strain of SARS-CoV-2 is claimed to be even more contagious than its initial forms that were observed at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Coronavirus Strain
The new COVID-19 strain has been identified in a new research paper by a team of scientists from the US and the UK. The research terms the new strain of Coronavirus as mutation ¡®Spike D614G¡¯ and deems it of ¡°urgent concern¡±. It even highlights that this strain is already becoming dominant across the world.
¡°It began spreading in Europe in early February, and when introduced to new regions it rapidly becomes the dominant form,¡± mentions the report. The research is based on the data collected from the Global Initiative for Sharing All Influenza Data or GISAID SARS-CoV-2 sequence database as a baseline.
(Representative Image: Reuters)
The Timeline
In most of the sequences sampled by the team prior to March 1 from across countries, the D614 form was the dominant local form early in the epidemic. ¡°Wherever G614 entered a population, a rapid rise in its frequency followed, and in many cases G614 became the dominant local form in a matter of only a few weeks,¡± mentions the research.
The study even mentions a timeline for the same. As of early March, the strain was found 7 times in 183 sequences. Four of these seven D614G strains were sampled in Europe and one each in Mexico, Brazil and Wuhan.
The second report came out in mid-March, when even GISAID started actively tracking D614G due to its high frequency. At the time, the strain was present in 29% of the global samples, but ¡°was still found almost exclusively in Europe.¡±
(Representative Image: Reuters)
It was in an early April sampling of GISAID data that showed an alarming increase in the frequency of D614G throughout March.
Another concern that arises with the strain is that it leaves individuals ¡°susceptible to a second infection,¡± as per the study.
The research identifies several more strains of the SARS-CoV-2, a total of ¡°fourteen mutations¡±. The D614G is the most dominant of them all as most others are locally mutated strains and have less to no difference in their impact than the original strain. There are similar researches going on that have also identified many such strains of COVID 19.
A point to note here is that the research could not identify any significant correlation ¡°between D614G status and hospitalization.¡± Meaning that even though the strain is more contagious, it cannot be said if it is deadlier than before or not.
