Question: Can you calculate how much a virus can spread just by studying its composition?

Alena Pance answered on 9 Jun 2020:

Hi Diego, I love your questions, their are very insightful and this one is particularly difficult to answer! The composition of a virus will give clues about the capacity of that virus to replicate, what cells it could invade if any and the means of jumping from person to person. A precise epidemiological calculation can be obtained from sequencing the genome of it, because all the slight changes will map out the trail the virus has followed and the speed at which this has happened.