Posted on 12/06/21
| News Source: i24
Covid variants change in severity, transmissibility, and immunity to vaccines produced to combat the virus
Any virus, including SARS-CoV-2 - the virus that causes Covid - can change over time, leading to thousands of different variants of Covid circulating across the world.
While most have little to no impact on the properties of a virus, some changes can affect how easily it spreads.
Changes include the severity of the virus as well as the performance of vaccines, which in turn cause public health and social measures to fluctuate.
How do Covid variants happen?
The genetic material of the Covid variants lies in something called RNA, which has similarities to DNA.
When a virus infects you, they attach to your cells and make copies of their RNA, which helps it to spread.
As viruses spread, there are commonly copying mistakes, or as scientists call them “mutations,” thus creating variants.