The breakthrough could help treat coronavirus complications. Photo: Getty
A month ago, scientists from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico released a paper that described how the SARS-CoV-2 virus had mutated into a more contagious or transmissible form.
The scientists said this strain was the result of a single mutation and was “of most concern.”
The paper hadn’t been peer-reviewed or published in a journal.
Over the next few days, the story spread faster and wider than the actual disease: the new strain was more aggressive, it made people sicker.
If this was true, finding a vaccine would be all the more difficult.
And if the virus continued to mutate into more virulent strains, finding a vaccine could prove impossible – as it has done with HIV.
Almost immediately, though, other scientists were calling the findings “overblown” and the research underdone.
Virologists speaking to The Atlantic, said such a dangerous mutation was “plausible”, but they didn’t believe there was any evidence for it — nor would there be for months, if it were to happen.
This isn’t to say that the Los Alamos researchers hadn’t found a mutation – they had, in fact, found a rare mutation in the spike protein of the virus.
Within a week, analysis from the Medical Research Council-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research (CVR) found that there was still only one strain.
Dr Oscar MacLean, from the CVR, in a prepared statement said: “By analysing the extensive genetic sequence variation present in the genomes of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the evolutionary analysis shows why these claims that multiple types of the virus are currently circulating are unfounded.
“It is important people are not concerned about virus mutations – these are normal and expected as a virus passes through a population.
“However, these mutations can be useful as they allow us to track transmission history and understand the historic pattern of global spread.”
There have been subsequent concerns about new, deadlier strains emerging, most recently last week from China, but again there is no hard evidence that this has happened.
Most virologists believe SARS-CoV-2 to be biologically stable. That is, it’s not becoming something new.
This is what you need to know about viral mutation and SARS-CoV-2: