The coronavirus has mutated, this according to an international team of researchers. While this new strain of the virus spreads from one person to next much quicker, it is less likely to make us any sicker than the original version of the virus.
“It is now the dominant form infecting people,” Erica Ollmann Saphire of the La Jolla Institute for Immunology and the Coronavirus Immunotherapy Consortium, told CNN. “This is now the virus.”
“We do know that the new virus is fitter. It doesn’t look at first glance as if it is worse,” Saphire said.
Researchers say this new strain of the virus multiplies faster in the upper respiratory tract, i.e. nose, throat and that is why it passes from person to person more easily. Despite this, researchers concluded that patients infected with the new version of the virus did not fare any worse than those who caught the original strain after conducting tests on 1,000 hospitalized coronavirus patients in Britain.
