Top Chinese scientists in the country where it all began have said that they may have a partial explanation to why the virus is more deadly in different parts of the world.
Researchers from Zhejiang University in China reported that they had “direct evidence” that the virus “has acquired mutations capable of substantially changing its pathogenicity”. Going onto explain they had found more than 30 strains of the new virus.
By means of “ultra-deep sequencing”, these researchers found 33 mutations of the new coronavirus of which 19 were new and hadn’t been analysed before.
The researchers said that “the true diversity of the viral strains is still largely underappreciated,” and that the deadliest variations were found in patients from Europe.
This particular study contained 11 patients – including eight males and three females aged between four months and 71 years old – who had “moderate or worse symptoms” of COVID-19.
Thankfully, they’ve all since recovered from the illness.
But what’s concerning here is that the most aggressive strains found in patents created up to 270 times as much “viral load” as the least aggressive. More viral load = more cell deaths the researchers explained.
At the time of writing, there have been more than 2.4 million coronavirus cases and more than 170,000 deaths worldwide.
