SARS-Cov-2 has experienced roughly the same amount of evolutionary change during the pandemic as humans have since Homo habilis first walked the Earth about 2.5m years ago.
Late last year, three distinct and fast-spreading coronavirus variants were observed in the UK, South Africa and Brazil. More recently, variants in India, the USand elsewhere are causing alarm. Does the emergence of these variants portend a protracted battle with the pandemic, or will the virus soon run out of evolutionary room to manoeuvre and settle down as a more benign, endemic pathogen?
Predictions about the evolutionary course of the virus, and specifically changes in virulence, will always be riddled with uncertainty. The vagaries of randomly mutating RNA, chaotic patterns of transmission and expansion, and partially understood forces of natural selection, present challenges to even the most insightful evolutionary soothsayer. Nevertheless, established evolutionary concepts, combined with a wealth of data from the virus itself, can at least provide some pointers.
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