• Question: how many variations of corona is there? how do you find out the new mutations?

    Asked by faux449jaw on 3 Feb 2022.
    • Photo: Danielle Nader

      Danielle Nader answered on 3 Feb 2022:

      There are a HUGE number of variations of coronavirus, but only the ones that increase the viruses ”fitness” aka how well it can survive, are the ones we need to worry about!

      Some mutations don’t help the virus at all, sometimes it actually harms its ability to grow, so those viruses don’t make it very far and die off quickly.

      The new mutations found in the variants of concern (like Omicron) are found using genomic sequencing. When you take a PCR test, the samples are analyzed and each amino acid is noted to make an entire sequence. We then compare this sequence to all the other versions of the virus, so this is how we can tell a mutation is present. For example, at site 152 there might be a Glycine in the original virus, but the new variation could have mutated into a Serine.

    • Photo: Valerie Vancollie

      Valerie Vancollie answered on 4 Feb 2022:

      My team is actually one of the ones who look for new variants. We get all the positive samples from the centres that do the initial PCR tests to see if people have Covid. If they do, those samples are put together and sent to us. We take 64,000 of those each week and prepare them to go onto the sequencing machines. Those looks at the genome of the virus to see if the sequence has changed. If so, we look to see if we’re seeing that change in many people. When a set of changes starts showing up a lot, we might have a new variant like Delta or Omicron.

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