What does it mean that the new coronavirus has mutated? The impact of the new coronavirus mutation

The Chinese research team found that the new coronavirus has mutated? The official has said that the new coronavirus has mutated! This means that it is more serious and more contagious than the previous coronavirus. To put it simply, the L subtype is closer to SARS, which is highly toxic but easy to control, while the S subtype is closer to influenza, which is milder but hard to prevent. In the future, the L subtype will slowly disappear like SARS, but the S subtype will become a long-term infectious disease like influenza. It is very likely that the S subtype mutated into the L type in the South China Seafood Market, causing a super outbreak.

What does it mean that the new coronavirus has mutated?

The latest findings of the Chinese research team show that the new coronavirus has recently produced 149 mutation points and evolved into two subtypes, namely L subtype and S subtype. The study found that the two subtypes showed great differences in geographical distribution and proportion in the population. Among them, the S type is a relatively older version, while the L subtype is more aggressive and more contagious. A deep understanding of different subtypes will contribute to the differentiated treatment and prevention and control of new coronary pneumonia. The above research comes from the paper "On the Origin and Continuous Evolution of SARS-CoV-2" published on March 3 in the National Science Review sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The corresponding authors of the paper are Researcher Lu Jian (Bioinformatics Center, School of Life Sciences, Peking University) and Researcher Cui Jie (Shanghai Pasteur Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences).

The impact of COVID-19 virus mutations

Everyone should understand one thing, what is natural selection? Natural selection is not that organisms consciously choose their own evolutionary direction, but that those evolutionary branches that are not conducive to development are screened out. It is said that the final evolutionary direction of the virus is to coexist peacefully with humans, with low toxicity and high infectivity, but in the process there may be mutations that evolve into highly toxic branches, which is just that this direction is screened out by natural selection.

1. Virus mutation is inevitable, especially for RNA viruses. Three months of widespread transmission is enough time for the virus to change.

2. Proportionally, fewer strains with older kinship have been found, which to some extent reflects the large differences in infectivity and pathogenicity between different strains. Therefore, looking back at past studies, the virus strains collected at the beginning of the year were more pathogenic strains, and the sources of these strains are often related to seafood markets/Wuhan personnel (people with serious symptoms will seek medical treatment and sampling as soon as possible). Therefore, the data used in existing studies on virus evolution may inevitably be affected by sampling bias, so the rationality of the research conclusions should be rationally judged.

How to view the mutation of the new coronavirus

I think it's logical.

Mutations are bound to occur, and we should not be surprised at this news.

1. For the virus, the best strategy is to try not to kill the host, expand the scope of infection as much as possible, spread itself, and adapt to the environment (including the epidemic prevention and control environment).

Survival of the fittest. The struggle between humans and diseases runs through the entire history of human development. From another perspective, the reduction of virulence is not bad news for individuals, but the increase in infectiousness is not good news for the whole body.

2. Clinically, it partially explains why most people have mild symptoms, but some people develop severe or critical illness, and why some people's condition takes a sudden turn for the worse.

Does it also provide an observable clue for determining who may develop severe symptoms and strengthening intervention?

3. What is even more worrying is that the new coronavirus will coexist with humans for a long time like the influenza virus.

Let’s ask science for the answer to what will happen specifically!

Related News

In the early stage of transmission, the ancestral type "S" was almost completely replaced by the mutant type "L", but as time went on, the "S" type gradually increased, suggesting that there may be a game process between the two types. It is speculated that the mutant type "L" may replicate and spread faster and have a shorter incubation period, allowing it to replace the ancestral type ("S") in the early stage of virus transmission and expand rapidly in the population.