An-Najah News - Some viruses like influenza mutate a lot, meaning that we need to update vaccines yearly to remain on top of the spread of seasonal flu unlike the Coronavirous that has stayed relatively stable, and it seems to be mutating much more slowly than influenza.

This is great news for vaccine development and for the scientists who are closely studying the virus. Right now, we don't know how this mutation would change the coronavirus, and the researchers are investigating. 

One study, from Arizona State University, discovered a large base pair deletion in a virus sample taken from a patient in Tempe.virologist Efrem Lim from Arizona State University said "One of the reasons why this mutation is of interest is because it mirrors a large deletion that arose in the 2003 SARS outbreak," 

Past research on similar genes and the fact it's only been found in a single individual, suggest that this deletion probably isn't great news for the virus.

"Collectively, although global next generation sequencing efforts indicate that SARS-CoV-2 genomes are relatively stable, dynamic mutations can be selected in symptomatic individuals."
Although rare, beneficial mutations do happen in all sorts of organisms – antibiotic resistance in bacteria is one such example. But right now, we just don't know which type of mutation D614G is for the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

The good thing is that researchers are on the case, and we'll no doubt have more information soon. So, although an already dangerous and highly con