Individual COVID-19 infections include multiple variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, research shows

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University found wide genetic variation in SARS-CoV-2 viruses among 360 patients whose viral infections were genetically sequenced, showing that all individual infections include multiple variants of the virus. The researchers noted that reporting about the virus usually highlights a single dominant strain, which leads to under-reporting virus genetic variation and can have serious consequences in public-health planning and response. Our work brings attention to the complexity of infectious diseases that is often over-simplified when considering only the most abundant virus in an infection, and we demonstrate the importance of examining the variations that are historically considered noise. We see that genetic variants observed in low frequency in SARS-CoV-2 infections can be early indicators of new strains responsible for later transmission surges.” Ernest (Ricky) Chan, director of the bioinformatics core with the Cleveland Institute for Computational Biology at the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine The paper, “COVID-19 Infection and Transmission...