Every time the coro­n­avirus pass­es from per­son to per­son it picks up tiny changes to its ge­net­ic code, but sci­en­tists are start­ing to no­tice pat­terns in how the virus is mu­tat­ing.

Now, a year af­ter the glob­al COVID-19 pan­dem­ic start­ed, the is­sue of mu­ta­tions looms at large. New vari­ants ca­pa­ble of spread­ing faster are emerg­ing and lead­ing to in­evitable ques­tions about man­ag­ing this pan­dem­ic and fu­ture lock­down. To date, there is lit­tle ev­i­dence, but sci­en­tists are al­ready start­ing to ex­plore how the COVID-19 virus will mu­tate in the fu­ture and whether they might be able to head it off.

Re­search from Cam­bridge

Over the course of 101 days, clin­i­cians at Ad­den­brookes Hos­pi­tal in Cam­bridge, UK, took 23 swab sam­ples from one pa­tient as he fought against the dis­ease. Each swab was sent off to a near­by lab­o­ra­to­ry to be analysed but when vi­rol­o­gists looked at the virus’ ge­net­ic ma­te­r­i­al in the sam­ples, they no­ticed some­thing as­ton­ish­ing – COVID-19 was evolv­ing be­fore their eyes.

"We saw some re­mark­able changes in the virus over that time," says Dr Ravin­da Gup­ta, an in­fec­tious dis­eases con­sul­tant at the hos­pi­tal and a clin­i­cal mi­cro­bi­ol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge who analysed the pa­tient’s sam­ples. “We saw mu­ta­tions that seemed to sug­gest the virus was show­ing signs of adap­ta­tion to avoid the an­ti­bod­ies in the con­va­les­cent plas­ma treat­ment. It was the first time we had seen some­thing like this hap­pen­ing in a per­son in re­al time.”

In­ter­na­tion­al Ge­net­ic Data­base cre­at­ed

Among the mu­ta­tions Gup­ta and his col­leagues iden­ti­fied was a dele­tion of two amino acids - known as H69 and V70 - in the spike pro­tein sit­ting on the out­side of the COVID-19 virus. This pro­tein plays a key role in the abil­i­ty of the coro­n­avirus to in­fect cells.

When Gup­ta and his team looked clos­er at the spike pro­tein dele­tion they had spot­ted, it pro­duced con­cern­ing re­sults. "We did some in­fec­tion ex­per­i­ments us­ing ar­ti­fi­cial virus­es and they showed that the H69/V70 dele­tion mu­ta­tion in­creas­es the in­fec­tiv­i­ty by twofold," says Gup­ta. This prompt­ed the re­searchers to scour the in­ter­na­tion­al ge­net­ic data­bas­es of COVID-19.

"We want­ed to see what was hap­pen­ing world­wide and we stum­bled up­on this big ex­pand­ing group of [H69/V70 dele­tion] se­quences in the UK," says Gup­ta. "When we looked more close­ly, we found that there was a new vari­ant caus­ing a big out­break.”

The new COVID-19 Vari­ants

Along­side this ge­net­ic change, they al­so found 16 oth­er mu­ta­tions that had al­tered the vi­ral pro­teins they cod­ed for, in­clud­ing sev­er­al on the spike pro­tein. What they had dis­cov­ered was a new lin­eage of the COVID-19 virus that had picked up mul­ti­ple mu­ta­tions over a rel­a­tive­ly short pe­ri­od of time. They des­ig­nat­ed it B117 – the new British COVID-19 vari­ant, al­so known as VOC 202012/01. It cut a path across the UK and had spread to 50 oth­er coun­tries by mid-Jan­u­ary.

An­oth­er vari­ant of con­cern found to be cir­cu­lat­ing in New York in Feb­ru­ary has al­so trou­bled sci­en­tists. This vari­ant, des­ig­nat­ed B1.526, has been in­creas­ing in num­bers and by mid-Feb­ru­ary ac­count­ed for 12.3% of the virus­es analysed. It con­tains two key mu­ta­tions – E484K and N501Y – that were al­so seen in the vari­ants of con­cern from Brazil and South Africa.

The emer­gence of these new vari­ants, which is es­ti­mat­ed to be 50 to 75% more trans­mis­si­ble than the orig­i­nal COVID-19, along with oth­ers be­ing de­tect­ed such as the South African and Brazil­ian vari­ants, has shone a spot­light on how the coro­n­avirus is mu­tat­ing as the pan­dem­ic rum­bles on. It has al­so raised con­cerns about how it might con­tin­ue to change in the fu­ture as we fight it with vac­cines.

Up­dat­ing the Vac­cine Year­ly

"To me these seem like a glimpse in­to the fu­ture where we are go­ing to be in an arms race with this virus, just like we are with the flu," says a vi­ral evo­lu­tion­ary bi­ol­o­gist and Pro­fes­sor at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty. “Each year the flu vac­cine has to be up­dat­ed as the in­fluen­za virus mu­tates and adapts to es­cape the im­mu­ni­ty al­ready present in the pop­u­la­tion. If the coro­n­avirus shows sim­i­lar ca­pa­bil­i­ties, it could mean we will have to adopt sim­i­lar tac­tics to keep it at bay, by reg­u­lar­ly up­dat­ing vac­cines.