Virus Variants Explained: Why COVID-19 Variants Arise

Science with a Twist

🎙 What are virus mutations, and what do they mean? Just like other viruses, COVID mutates all the time. Andy explains what mutation is, how it happens, and the importance of monitoring it.

"What we need to capture in these surveillance efforts is how these viruses are changing and how quickly they are changing. So you've heard of mutations, and they are a result of these changes in the viruses. They change the nucleic acid or the DNA sequence of the virus itself and that changes the infectivity or the severity of the disease itself. So we monitor these viruses to see how the DNA sequences are changing and whether these changes pose any more threat to the population in terms of infectivity or the severity of the disease."

🎙 The uniqueness of COVID-19. Coronaviruses have been around for decades. But, COVID symptoms are considerably more severe than those of other coronavirus infections. Kamini shares her viewpoint on the uniqueness of COVID. "I think what is unique about COVID is just the level of population spread. It creates this reservoir for the virus to mutate much faster because initially, when COVID came out, we thought it mutated much slower than the influenza virus. But over time, we've seen it pick up speed and momentum, and it's changing more rapidly."

🎙 Viruses mutate constantly. Mutations are a regular part of every virus's life cycle, but we need to monitor them to identify variants of concern. Andy explains, "The virus is evolving, and all viruses constantly evolve, and they spin up new variants. Whether those variants rise to what Kamini described as a variant of concern depends on exactly what changes happen in the DNA sequence. But variants of interest and other variants that have no effect on what we are concerned about — which is the health outcome of being infected — happen all the time."