New version of coronavirus spreads faster, but doesn't make people sicker: Study

A study has confirmed that a new mutated version of coronavirus has spread from Europe to the United States. The study found that the new virus spreads much faster than earlier variations of the disease, but doesn't seem to make people any sicker. The study said that even though COVID-19 sequence diversity is very low, natural selection can sometimes act upon rare favorable mutations. The mutated version of the virus named G614 first emerged in Europe in February and completely replaced the earlier one called D614 from the region and also from the United States. 

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"G614 is associated with potentially higher viral loads in COVID-19 patients but not with disease severity," the study stated. "Our global tracking data show that the G614 variant in Spike has spread faster than D614. We interpret this to mean that the virus is likely to be more infectious.  Interestingly, we did not find evidence of G614 impact on disease severity; i.e., it was not significantly associated with hospitalization status," the study added further.

The study presents evidence to show that there are now more SARS-CoV-2 viruses circulating in the human population globally that have the G614 form of the Spike protein versus the D614 form that was originally identified from the first human cases in Wuhan, China. 

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European countries among the hardest-hit

European countries were among the hardest-hit by the pandemic with Italy, Spain, France, and the United Kingdom still in the top-10 list of worst-affected nations. Italy and Spain remained topmost affected countries for quite some time before the United States surpassed them to become the worst-hit country in the world with over 2.7 million cases and more than 1,28,000 deaths. According to figures by Johns Hopkins University, the world has recorded over 10.8 million coronavirus cases so far, of which more than 5,21,000 people have lost their lives.

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