Its code name: D614G. Its particularity: to be a variant of the coronavirus that is more contagious … but paradoxically less deadly.
According to a study published in the journal Cell, it is this variant of Covid-19 that now dominates the world. Concretely, this mutation infects cells more easily than the one that originally appeared in China several months ago. In figures, this is verified quite significantly. While on March 1 the D614G variant was only observed in 10% of the genetic sequences of the virus studied by the researchers, it was found in 78% of the sequences in mid-May according to the Cell study.
A clear increase that coincides with a drop in death rates, as reported by Paul Tambyah, president-elect of the International Society of Infectious Diseases, to Reuters. “Maybe it’s a good thing to have a more infectious but less deadly virus“, he enlightens, before adding:”It is in the interest of the virus to infect more people but not kill them, since a virus depends on its host“.
This explains – a little – the rate of contamination is increasing faster than that of hospitalizations, as has been the case in France for several weeks.
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