Viruses will do what it takes to survive – even if it means killing off an older, weaker self and replacing it with a more transmissible strain.
For the first several months of the pandemic, however, the coronavirus had no need to become more dangerous: The virus was doing a good job of spreading, with each new infected person passing it to an average of two to three others. At the time, scientists hoped that the original strain of the virus, known as the “wild type,” was already contagious enough that it wouldn’t evolve further.
But as the pandemic swelled and more people got infected, the coronavirus had more opportunities to replicate, and therefore mutate, incurring small, random changes in its genetic sequence. Most mutations are harmless, but every so often a distinct set yields new properties – a variant.
Read more of the original article from MSN
