Jul 4, 2020 | CuencaHighLife |
Researchers have been analyzing and tracking the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, since it first appeared in China in January and a team at the Scripps Research Institute have found that the strains spreading so quickly in Europe and the U.S. have a mutated S “spike” protein that makes it about 10 times more infectious than the strain that originally was identified in Asia. The research was published online on bioRxiv and has yet to be peer-reviewed.
The mutation does not appear to make the virus any more deadly than earlier strains and it could, in fact, be less deadly. The original strain in China is dubbed D614, while the one found in the UK, Italy and North America by May is dubbed G614.