Quote (Plaguefear @ Mar 29 2020 06:48pm)
I used incognito to read it, its world wide, 11 strains is the estimate and one killed a healthy 16 year old in France yesterday.
Quote
As the new coronavirus continues to spread around the globe, researchers say the virus is changing its genetic makeup slightly. But does that mean it is becoming more dangerous to humans? And what would the impact be on any future vaccines?
"In the literal sense of 'is it changing genetically,' the answer is absolutely yes," says Marc Lipsitch, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Harvard University. "What is in question is whether there's been any change that's important to the course of disease or the transmissibility or other things that we as humans care about."
So far, "there is no credible evidence of a change in the biology of the virus either for better or for worse," says Lipsitch.
Coronaviruses — like all viruses — change small parts of their genetic code all the time.
"Viruses mutate naturally as part of their life cycle," says Ewan Harrison, scientific project manager for the COVID-19 Genomics UK Consortium, a new project that tracks the virus in the United Kingdom.
Like flu and measles, the coronavirus is an RNA virus. It's a microscopic package of genetic instructions bundled in a protein shell. When a virus infects a person, the string of genetic instructions enables the virus to spread by telling it how to replicate once it enters a cell. The virus makes copies of itself and pushes them out to other cells in the body. Infectious doses of the virus can be coughed out in droplets and inhaled by others.
Inevitably, viruses "make mistakes in their genomes" as they copy themselves, says Harrison. Those changes can accumulate and carry over to future copies of the virus. Researchers are using these small, cumulative changes to trace the pathway of the virus through groups of people.
So far, researchers who are tracking the genetic changes in SARS-CoV-2 — the official name for the coronavirus — say it seems relatively stable. It acquires about two mutations a month during this process of spread, Harrison says — about one-third to one-half the rate of the flu.
Coronaviruses differ from flu viruses in another key way that reduces the number of mutations. They proofread their own genomes when they copy themselves, cutting out things that don't seem right. "They maintain this ability to keep their genome pretty much intact," says Vineet Menachery, a virologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch. "The mutations that they incorporate are relatively rare."
Just saying.