“I would expect a similar job” in the United States, said Trevor Bedford, an evolutionary biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. The variant probably now accounts for less than 1 percent of cases, but is possibly the most cases by March.
The variant has 23 mutations, compared to the original virus discovered in Wuhan, China. Seventeen mutations have appeared since the virus deviated from its youngest ancestor, said Muge Cevik, an infectious disease expert at the University of St. Louis. Andrews in Scotland, said and a scientific adviser to the British government.
The speed with which the virus has undergone so many changes worries scientists that they expected the coronavirus to develop much more slowly.
Current vaccine candidates must continue to protect people from disease, several experts said. But the appearance of the new variant, which contains at least one mutation that weakens the body’s immune protection, makes it likely that the vaccines need to be adjusted regularly, just as it is effective against the flu virus.
Scientists are not yet sure how much easier the mutant spreads. The initial estimates were about 70 percent more transferable, but the figure has since been revised to 56 percent and could drop even lower, said Dr. Cevik said.
But with every new person who infects it, the coronavirus also has a greater chance of mutating, and therefore there will be more chances of mutations giving it an advantage – by making it more contagious or less susceptible to the immune system, for example.
“If you have enough of it, large amounts of virus replication around the world, you will get a lot of different variants,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, a virologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.