New mutant coronavirus more contagious: study

A mutant strain of the coronavirus has become the virus’ dominant form and is even more contagious than earlier versions, according to scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

In a new study, the researchers found this new strain has been dominant since mid-March after it first appeared in Europe the month prior and quickly spread to the East Coast. On top of being more contagious and spreading faster, it may also make people at risk of a second infection if it mutates so much that the people are no longer immune to the new strain.

The researchers hope their study will serve as an “urgent need for an early warning” so vaccines being developed will be effective against the new strain.

While the new strain is more contagious, the researchers do not know why that is the case.

“The story is worrying, as we see a mutated form of the virus very rapidly emerging, and over the month of March becoming the dominant pandemic form,” study leader Bette Korber, a computational biologist at Los Alamos, wrote on her Facebook page. “When viruses with this mutation enter a population, they rapidly begin to take over the local epidemic, thus they are more transmissible.”

If the virus is not stable and continues to mutate, the different mutations could require different vaccines.

The different strains could also account for how the virus has hit different areas harder than others, however, the Los Alamos researchers found that regardless of which strain infected a person, hospitalization rates were about the same and no strain was more lethal than another, which mirrors previous research.