New Delhi: At a time when the entire world is fighting the crisis brought out by the Novel COVID-19, scientists have found a mutated strain of Coronavirus and have warned that it could be more dangerous.
A team of US scientists led by US-based Los Alamos National Laboratory (Los Alamos or LANL) have identified that the new strain is more contagious than the virus in early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The 33-page report was posted Thursday on prepreint portal BioRxiv, which is yet to be peer-reviewed, the new strain appeared in February in Europe, migrated to the US East Coast and has been the dominant strain across the world since mid-March, according to a report in Los Angeles Times on Tuesday.
“We have developed an analysis pipeline to facilitate real-time mutation tracking in SARS-CoV-2, focusing initially on the Spike (S) protein because it mediates infection of human cells and is the target of most vaccine strategies and antibody-based therapeutics. To date we have identified fourteen mutations in Spike that are accumulating,” the summary of the report reads.
The report further adds that the mutation is of urgent concern. It began spreading in Europe in early February, and when introduced to new regions it rapidly becomes the dominant form, the report added.
"In addition to spreading faster, it may make people vulnerable to a second infection after a first bout with the disease," the report wrote.
As per the COVID-19 Dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University, there are 3,664,011 coronavirus cases worldwide while the death toll has reached 257,301.
