SARS CoV-2 The Scoop not the Poop

The new coronavirus, like all other viruses, mutates, or undergoes small changes in its genome. A recently published study suggested that the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, had already mutated into one more and one less aggressive strain. But experts aren't convinced.

In the study, a group of researchers in China analyzed the genomes of coronaviruses taken from 103 patients with COVID-19, the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, in Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the outbreak. The team found differences in the genomes, which they said could be categorized into two "strains" of the coronavirus: the "L" type and the "S" type, the researchers wrote in the study, which was published Tuesday (March 3) in the journal National Science Review. 

The researchers found the "L" type, which they deemed the more aggressive type, in 70% of the virus samples. They also found that the prevalence of this strain decreased after early January. The more commonly found type today is the older, "S" type, because "human intervention" such as quarantines MAY HAVE reduced the ability of the "L" type to spread, researchers wrote in the paper.

"It's a very small sample set of the total virus population," Grubaugh (an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health who was not part of the study) told Live Science. Figuring out the mutations that a virus underwent worldwide takes "a nontrivial amount of effort and sometimes takes years to complete," he said.

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