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Coronavirus pandemic
ChinaScience

Coronavirus’s ability to mutate has been vastly underestimated, and mutations affect deadliness of strains, Chinese study finds

  • The most aggressive strains of Sars-CoV-2 could generate 270 times as much viral load as the least potent type
  • New York may have a deadlier strain imported from Europe, compared to less deadly viruses elsewhere in the United States

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A team led by Professor Li Lanjuan has studied how the novel coronavirus mutates and possible implications for the pandemic. Photo: EPA-EFE
Stephen Chen
A new study by one of China’s top scientists has found the ability of the new coronavirus to mutate has been vastly underestimated and different strains may account for different impacts of the disease in various parts of the world.

Professor Li Lanjuan and her colleagues from Zhejiang University found within a small pool of patients many mutations not previously reported. These mutations included changes so rare that scientists had never considered they might occur.

They also confirmed for the first time with laboratory evidence that certain mutations could create strains deadlier than others.

“Sars-CoV-2 has acquired mutations capable of substantially changing its pathogenicity,” Li and her collaborators wrote in a non-peer reviewed paper released on preprint service medRxiv.org on Sunday.

Li’s study provided the first hard evidence that mutation could affect how severely the virus caused disease or damage in its host.

Li took an unusual approach to investigate the virus mutation. She analysed the viral strains isolated from 11 randomly chosen Covid-19 patients from Hangzhou in the eastern province of Zhejiang, and then tested how efficiently they could infect and kill cells.

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