Could Covid-19 be Mutating?

Covid-19 could be mutating into a more contagious virus, could that mean the cases spike even more? A study is being conducted in Houston that involves 5,000 Covid-19 and they have possibly found that genetic mutations are happening that could lead it to be more contagious than before.“the virus is mutating due to a combination of neutral drift, which just means random genetic changes that don’t help or hurt the virus, and pressure from our immune systems.” said by Ilya Finkelstein, an associate professor of molecular bioscience at the University of Texas at Austin (SciTechDaily). There is a chance still that things could change but it could just be something that doesn’t help the virus at all.

During the first part of the pandemic Houston only had 71% of people that had this mutation but during the second wave during the summer it went to 99.9%. This has also been found around the world with a percent of people going up in having this mutation which could lead to it actually being more contagious. The D614G mutation could have had a head start when it started arriving in Europe and North America.”Founder’s effects.” (SciTechDaily) could be a reason, this was said by many scientists that say it could have been more common in the the first viruses that Came into U.S. and Europe which also mean that these first versions would be spreading first. The mutation could have led to more deaths and infections but we don’t know at this point how many out of infections and deaths were from this Mutated version of the virus.