Corona changed 7000 times ... for better or worse for us?

New data indicate that the emerging coronavirus, "SARS Cove 2", which causes Covid-19 disease, changes its composition, and that there is a climatic environment with certain characteristics that favor it. Will changes in this virus make it less or more fierce, and what environment does it prefer?

The start with statements by prominent Italian doctor Alberto Zangrelo, on Sunday, in which he said that the new Corona virus began to lose its potency and became less lethal.

"As a matter of fact, the virus is no longer clinically present in Italy," said Zangrelo - who heads the San Rafael Hospital in Milan, in the Lombardy region in the north of the country, which bears the brunt of Corona virus infection in Italy -.

"The smears taken over the past ten days showed a very small viral load in terms of quantity, compared to smears taken a month or two ago," he told Italian RAY television station.

Zangrelo said that some experts exaggerate the possibility of a second wave of infection, so politicians must take into account the new reality.

How does the virus change?

Viruses change through a mutation in their genetic material, and mutations are part of the basic nature of viruses, and this means that these transformations and changes are a natural part of the life cycle of viruses. As the new Corona virus spreads from person to person and from one country to another, it is believed to have changed thousands of times.

Viruses are known to consist of a genetic material contained within a coating of protein, and when the virus enters the cells of the human body, it begins to make new copies of itself to infect other cells.

Corona virus is a RNA virus, and, in general, RNA viruses tend to have high mutation rates, compared to DNA. Most mutations in viruses do not cause any advantages or problems, either for the virus or for the host, that is, we humans in this case.

There are two strains of the emerging coronavirus, according to a study by researchers at the College of Life Sciences at Beijing University of China and the Pasteur Institute in Shanghai:

The S-type, which is the oldest strain of the virus and appears to have less symptoms and less infection, has spread to China.

The L-type strain later emerged after the Strain L-type, which is faster.

It is likely that the first strain, the "S", appeared at the time the virus moved from animals to humans, and then the second appeared soon after.

Research published last month suggested that the SARS Cove 2 virus is somewhat more stable than other types of viruses, in a Scottish study published in the journal Virus Evolution, and said that there are just over seven thousand "7000" mutation Documented so far in the emerging corona virus, which represents about a third of the rate of mutations in influenza.

The study suggested that these mutations are not likely to significantly affect the biology of the virus.

What do the data say?

There are numbers indicating that the Corona virus is already receding, as Zangrelo said. In Europe, the improvement in the health situation has led to the gradual lifting of restrictions in the population to limit the spread of the disease. In Italy, injuries and deaths in Coruna declined continuously in May.

In France, health officials said on Sunday that the number of cases of coronavirus has continued to decline, as there are currently 14,322 hospital patients, down from 14,380 the day before. The Health Directorate said in a statement that the number of "Covid-19" patients in intensive care units decreased from 1361 to 1319.

In Britain, six people are now allowed to gather and the most vulnerable, who have been forced to completely isolate themselves, can go out with caution. Some shops, such as cars or markets, can resume their activities.

Sweden said on Sunday that it had not recorded any new deaths from "Covid-19" during the past 24 hours, for the first time since March.

second opinion

On the other hand, there is another opinion. For example, last month, a report published by Bloomberg said that researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the United States suggested that at least one variant of the emerging corona virus had mutated significantly to make the virus more infectious.

The researchers found that there were changes in the SARS Cove 2 virus that began to rapidly dominate as the virus spread throughout Europe. These mutations distinguished this virus from the Asian version, one of which was called "Spike D614G".

And the importance of Spike protein is that it is the key that the virus uses to enter and infect the healthy host cell before it is seized and used to copy itself, so this mutation may mean a greater spread of the virus later.

We must note that, in exchange for the decline of the virus in Europe, it is spreading rapidly in Latin America, where the number of infections has exceeded the million mark.

In Brazil, Corona resulted in over half a million injuries and thirty thousand deaths. In Mexico, about ten thousand deaths were recorded. In Peru, it recorded more than 160,000 injuries and more than 4,500 deaths.

the climate

The worrying news also came from a Chinese study recently, warning that the Corona virus may spread periodically and outbreaks of large cities may recur in the autumn of 2020.

Chinese researchers have discovered that more than half of the confirmed cases of the emerging coronavirus have occurred in places where the air temperature ranges between 5 to 15 degrees Celsius, according to Xinhua.

The researchers from Lanzhou University hoped to identify the environmental parameters by which SARS Cove 2 could survive in order to understand its global spread.

It is noteworthy that the spread of the new corona virus is affected by several factors, and the researchers studied the natural factors that affect the pandemic.

The researchers also studied the influence of ambient temperature on the global spread of Covid-19, according to their research article recently published in the journal "Total Environmental Sciences".

The relationship between daily confirmed cases of Covid-19 and meteorological conditions including temperature and humidity was studied, based on data from approximately 3.75 million confirmed cases of Covid-19 in 185 countries and regions between January 21 and May 6. /May.

The researchers found that places with a temperature of 5 to 15 degrees Celsius reported 60% of confirmed cases of Covid-19. Moreover, approximately 73.8% of confirmed cases were concentrated in areas with absolute humidity of 3 to 10 grams per cubic meter.

Their findings indicated that "SARS Cove 2" is spread from areas in the lower and middle latitudes to areas in higher latitudes, and also indicated that there is an optimal climate region in which the focus of "SARS Cove 2" increases significantly in the environment surrounding what In it surfaces of things.

The researchers warned that the pandemic may spread periodically, and outbreaks may recur in large cities at mid-latitudes in the autumn of 2020.

"We cannot rely on the guesswork that the Covid-19 outbreak will stop as the temperature increases," said Huang Zhongwei, the first author of the research article.