Mutating coronavirus is turning more lethal: Study

HOUSTON: A research published in the journal mBIO has found that the novel coronavirus is going through various genetic mutations and some of it may have made it more contagious. The study involved more than 5,000 COVID-19 patients in United States of America (USA). The results of the study revealed that a mutation, called D614G, is located in the spike protein that allows the entry of virus.

Ilya Finkelstein, Associate Professor, University of Texas, USA, said that the virus is mutating due to a combination of neutral drift which means some random genetic changes which don’t help or hurt the virus. The researchers also found that at the beginning of the pandemic, around 71 per cent of the patients with novel coronavirus had this mutation.

The researchers said that the reason why strains containing such mutations outcompete those without them is due to the fact that natural selection would choose the strain that transmits more easily. The expert team has found in lab experiments that at least one such mutation allows spike to evade a neutralising antibody that fights SARS-CoV-2 and produces naturally.

The scientists have recorded a total of 285 mutations across thousands of infections, although a lot of them don’t appear to have much effect on the severity of disease.