Everything You Need To Know About COVID-19 Variants
How worried should we be?
Claire Gagne
Updated
Pedestrians in central London on January 8, 2021. (Photo: Tolga Akmen/AFP via Getty Images)
Almost exactly a year after the novel coronavirus was identified in Wuhan, completely changing the world as we know it, scary headlines are talking about new, faster-spreading variants of COVID-19. Here’s what you need to know about these new variants of COVID-19.
What’s the deal with mutations and variants?
First, let’s get some terms down. SARS-CoV-2 is the name of the virus that causes COVID-19—and it’s a strain of the coronavirus family of viruses. However, viruses are constantly mutating, or changing, and that’s what we’re seeing now of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This is completely normal. “As viruses copy themselves [to reproduce], mistakes are made,” explains Dr. Sumontra Chakrabarti, an infectious disease specialist at Trillium Health Partners in Mississauga, Ont. “Most of them are inconsequential. It would be like somebody wearing a hat, and changing a letter; instead of Montreal Canadiens, it now says Ontreal Canadiens.” Rarely though, mutations can make subtle changes in the virus that alter how it behaves. That’s what’s happened with at least two COVID-19 variants that are circulating in parts of the world.