Can new variants of the coronavirus continue to appear?
Yes, as long as the virus that caused the pandemic continues to infect people. But that does not mean that the new variants are going to appear as often or that they are more dangerous.
With more than half the world’s population still unvaccinated, the virus is likely to continue to find people to infect and where to continue to replicate in the coming months or years. And each time this happens, a small mutation could occur. These changes can help you survive, turning into new variants.
But this does not mean that the virus will continue to evolve in the same way that it has since its appearance at the end of 2019.
When a virus infects a new species, it needs to adapt to the new receptor to spread more widely, said Andrew Read, a virus expert at Pennsylvania State University.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the delta variant is twice as contagious as previous versions of the virus. And while it may continue to mutate to become more infectious, it is not likely to double its transmission rate again, said Dr. Adam Lauring, an expert in viruses and infectious diseases at the University of Michigan.
“We have seen a stage of rapid evolution of the virus. He has been harvesting the ripe fruit, but there is not an infinite number of things he can do, ”Lauring added.
The virus may become more deadly, but there is no evolutionary reason for this. Very sick people are also unlikely to socialize and spread the virus to others.
Experts are looking at whether emerging variants could be more effective in evading the protection that develops with vaccination and contagion. As more people get vaccinated, the virus would have to be able to spread between people with a certain level of immunity to survive, said Dr. Joshua Schiffer, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
“The virus could adopt a mutation that makes the immune response less effective,” he said.
If this occurs, scientists may recommend updating vaccine formulas regularly, as is the case with influenza vaccines.
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