The doctor’s immunologist-allergist Vladimir Bolibok told Lente.ru, why in the world thousands of COVID-19 mutations, but at the same time a relatively small number of strains.
According to him, the longer the infection is inside a person who has infected with coronavirus, the more inside the person there is mutations of the virus. “Remember there was a message last year that a foreign patient had a coronavirus infection for longer than four months, and she found several dozen mutations,” the example of a physician immunologist led.
“The virus mutates constantly: when it breeds in the human body, millions and hundreds of millions of copies arise. It is clear that such a number of copies cannot be completely identical to each other, many erroneous copies arise, that is, mutations,” explained Bolibok. However, most mutations, according to the immunologist, do not lead to anything, since the virus turns out to be unsuitable: either he cannot infect a human cell or cannot be replicated. “That is, it’s just a genetic ballast,” the Bolibok noted.
Strain is a mutation that leads to the appearance of a stable variety of a virus capable of transmitting further, an immunologist told. “For the virus, two properties are important: replication, that is, the ability to multiply inside the host cells, and contagiousness, that is, the ability to infect other cells, and also stand out from the host’s body and transmitted to another person.” – explained Bolibok.
Previously, Bolibok suggested that the most dangerous COVID-19 mutation will arise if it crosses with HIV and learn how to attack T-lymphocytes, that is, the cells of the immune system. This will lead to the fact that an infected person, in principle, will not be able to recover.