The virus has undergone over a hundred tiny mutations which act like genetic fingerprints – allowing researchers to see how the virus is migrating and splitting into similar but new subtypes, which can be seen at the website\u00a0NextStrain.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n (for more on “strain” vs “mutation” and why the terminology is causing confusion,\u00a0see this thread<\/a>\u00a0from NextStrain’s Trevor Bedford)<\/p>\n Labs around the world are turning their sequencing machines, most about the size of a desktop printer, to the task of\u00a0rapidly sequencing the genomes of virus samples taken from\u00a0people sick with COVID-19.\u00a0The information is uploaded to a website called\u00a0NextStrain.org<\/a> that shows how the virus is migrating and splitting into similar\u00a0but new subtypes. –USA Today<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Frequent sequencing of the virus has allowed researchers to draw several conclusions; for example,\u00a0social distancing and shelter-in-place orders appear to be working\u00a0<\/strong>in some areas, and that the virus doesn’t appear to be growing more lethal as it evolves.<\/p>\n “The virus mutates so slowly that the virus strains are fundamentally very similar to each other<\/strong>,” said infectious disease specialist Charlies Chiu of the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine. “The outbreaks are trackable. We have the ability to do genomic sequencing almost in real-time to see what strains or lineages are circulating,” he added.<\/p>\n Chiu also believes that it’s\u00a0unlikely that the difference in strains is responsible for the virus hitting people differently –\u00a0<\/strong>with most some feeling only slightly under the weather for a day or two, 15% needing hospitalization, and a mortality rate that varies by country (and likely by testing rates).<\/p>\n SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the COVID-19 illness, began circulating in China around mid-November or mid-December. Its genome is made up of approximately\u00a030,000 base pairs<\/strong>\u00a0– while a human has over 3 billion. According to the report,\u00a0the virus’s most divergent strains contain only 11 base pair changes<\/strong>.<\/p>\n So far,\u00a0most\u00a0cases on the U.S. West Coast are linked to a strain\u00a0first identified in Washington state<\/strong>. It may have come from\u00a0a man who had been in Wuhan<\/a>, China, the virus\u2019 epicenter, and returned home on Jan. 15. It is only\u00a0three mutations away\u00a0<\/a>from the original Wuhan strain, according to work done early in the outbreak\u00a0by Trevor Bedford, a computational biologist at Fred Hutch, a medical research center in Seattle.<\/p>\n On the East Coast there are several strains, including the one from Washington and others that appear to have made their way from China to Europe and then to New York and beyond<\/strong>, Chiu said. –USA Today<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Of note, the general public should probably leave analysis of the above ‘phylogenetic tree’ to the experts, as they can be “a little dangerous” to decipher, according to professor Kristian Anderson of Scripps Research – a nonprofit biomedical science research facility in La Jolla, California.<\/p>\n “This is the first time phylogenetic trees have been all over Twitter,” he said, adding “Remember, we\u2019re seeing a very small glimpse into the much larger pandemic.\u00a0We have half a million described cases right now but maybe 1,000 genomes sequenced. So there are a lot of lineages we\u2019re missing<\/strong>.”<\/p>\n Anderson added that COVID-19\u00a0does not mutate very fast<\/strong>\u00a0– in fact, it’s 8-10 times slower than the influenza virus, and closer to other coronaviruses such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).<\/p>\n Lastly, and perhaps the best news of the report –\u00a0it’s not expected to spontaneously evolve into a more deadly form<\/strong>, as it’s under no pressure to evolve due to its hyper-virulent nature.<\/p>\n Read the rest of the report\u00a0here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n
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