[nomadking]

New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

Why is this variant causing concern?
Three things are coming together that mean it is attracting attention:

• It is rapidly replacing other versions of the virus
• It has mutations that affect part of the virus likely to be important
• Some of those mutations have already been shown in the lab to increase the ability of the virus to infect cells

All of these come together to build a case for a virus that can spread more easily.

The other mutation - a H69/V70 deletion, in which a small part of the spike is removed - has emerged several times before, including famously in infected mink.
Work by Prof Ravi Gupta at the University of Cambridge has suggested this mutation increases infectivity two-fold in lab experiments.

Has this happened before?
Yes.
The virus that was first detected in Wuhan, China, is not the same one you will find in most corners of the world.
The D614G mutation emerged in Europe in February and became the globally dominant form of the virus.
Another, called A222V, spread across Europe and was linked to people's summer holidays in Spain.