Can summer have any influence on the coronavirus? Answering a listener's question about a possible Covid-19 mutation, our journalist explains how the virus can mutate and the consequences that result from such a mutation. 

Every day, Europe 1 answers the questions that listeners ask themselves about the coronavirus. Questions mainly focused on the impact of Covid-19 on our health, but also on its possible developments. Like this question asked on Saturday by an auditor. She wonders if summer, which will be here in a month, can have any influence on the virus.

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Claire's question

Can summer favor a mutation of the virus?

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Anne le Gall's answer

It is not necessarily summer that can encourage mutations, but yes, the virus mutates as it circulates. In fact, to spread, this coronavirus produces copies of itself. So the more it spreads, the more it multiplies, and the more there can be modifications and errors in the copy.

Most often, this is without consequences, but these mutations can give him an advantage for his survival and allow him to attack the sick more severely. At this stage, experts believe that the mutations have not changed its dangerousness, but we cannot anticipate its future developments, hence the impossibility of containing the circulation of the virus and of following it by sequencing its genome during regular withdrawals. This is what will also make it possible to develop an effective vaccine.

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Moreover, the coronavirus which is currently spreading is itself the mutation of a previous virus. A study on the subject appeared on May 10, 2020, in  Current Biology , an American scientific journal. The authors of this study indicate that they have identified in bats a coronavirus (RmYN02) which may well be the closest cousin of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus at the origin of the pandemic that is currently known.