This thing is a stealth bomber. First, a long incubation period and asymptomatic spread. Then it starts out as “just the flu, bro.” Now it’s causing clotting disorders and limb amputations. This is a bioweapon boys and girls, and it’s just getting started.
Coronavirus has mutated into at least 30 different strains new study finds
The study was carried out by Professor Li Lanjuan and colleagues from Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China and published in a non-peer reviewed paper released on website medRxiv.org on Sunday.
Li’s team analyzed the strains from 11 randomly chosen coronavirus patients from Hangzhou, where there have been 1,264 reported cases, and then tested how efficiently they could infect and kill cells.
More than 30 different mutations were detected, of which 19 were previously undiscovered.
“Sars-CoV-2 has acquired mutations capable of substantially changing its pathogenicity,” Li wrote in the paper.
The team discovered that some of the mutations could lead to functional changes in the virus’ spike protein, the South China Morning Post reported. Spike protein is the protein that the coronavirus uses to attach itself to human cells.
Li ‘s team infected cells with COVID-19 strains carrying different mutations, of which the most aggressive strains were found to generate as much as 270 times as much viral load as the weakest strains. The aggressive strains also killed the human cells the fastest.
h/t Dr. Daniel Jackson