The SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus mutates very slowly, which makes it possible to count on the effectiveness of the future vaccine, reports the daily USA Today, which refers to a Californian professor of medicine and infectious diseases.
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Scientists analyzed eight strains of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which causes Covid-19 disease, and considered its mutation rate to be quite low, the USA Today newspaper reported.
“The virus mutates so slowly that its strains are similar,” said Charles Chiu, professor of medicine and infectious diseases at the University of California in San Francisco, quoted by the daily.
According to the researchers, SARS-CoV-2 mutates eight to 10 times slower than influenza viruses. Scientists have so far recorded only 11 changes in 30,000 nucleotides.
There is no such thing as a “soft version” of the coronavirus
This suggests that the symptoms and severity of the course of Covid-19 in different patients do not depend on the strain of the coronavirus, but on their general health and the state of their immune system. So the “soft version” of coronavirus probably doesn’t exist.
Thanks to the low mutation rate of SARS-CoV-2, humans can protect themselves with a vaccine for years, if not decades, scientists say.
The Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, the first cases of which were recorded in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December, has already affected 177 countries. According to Johns Hopkins University, about 713,000 people have been infected, more than 33,600 have died and more than 149,000 people have recovered.
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