Virologist Christian Drosten heads the responsible department at the Charité Berlin. Image: AP
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Drosten explains how coronavirus could become a harmless runny nose
The corona virus has kept us busy for the past few weeks and months. That will probably continue to do so in the near future. But it could be over in the foreseeable future – and the virus turns into a relatively harmless runny nose.
Virologist Christian Drosten explains this in his podcast on Tuesday. He initially cites a study by Oxford University. Scientists had examined the development of different populations of the corona virus.
The virus was examined in a total of 405 patients for the study. It turned out that some investigators already carry two different populations of the virus.
«First of all, that’s bad news», said Drosten. Because: If two different strains of virus spread independently of one another and then met again, this testifies to the good survivability of the virus. And it also shows that despite different developments, Sars-Cov-2 viruses can multiply together when they meet again. This in turn favors mutations.
Better transmission, but only a runny nose
But there is also good news. Because Drosten also concludes from the results of the study that the virus has a good chance of adapting to humans. What sounds threatening at first is exactly the opposite:
It could also be that the coronavirus develops through mutations in the direction of more severe disease courses. According to the laws of evolution, that doesn’t make sense. “If symptoms appear faster and more violently, people isolate themselves earlier and thus infect fewer people.” As a result, virus epidemics generally weaken.
Either way: “The virus will in any case become harmless”, Drosten suspects. In addition to his assumptions about the evolutionary factors, he also cites increasing population immunity.
(om / watson.de)
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