Everything You Need To Know About COVID-19 Variants
How worried should we be? Claire Gagne Updated
Pedestrians in central London on January 8, 2021. (Photo: Tolga Akmen/AFP via Getty Images)
Almost exactly a year after the novel coronavirus was identified in Wuhan, completely changing the world as we know it, scary headlines are talking about new, faster-spreading variants of COVID-19. Here’s what you need to know about these new variants of COVID-19.
What’s the deal with mutations and variants?
First, let’s get some terms down. SARS-CoV-2 is the name of the virus that causes COVID-19 and it’s a strain of the coronavirus family of viruses. However, viruses are constantly mutating, or changing, and that’s what we’re seeing now of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This is completely normal. “As viruses copy themselves [to reproduce], mistakes are made,” explains Dr. Sumontra Chakrabarti, an infectious disease specialist at Trillium Health Partners in Missi