BOZEMAN — Just when you think you know enough about the coronavirus, there’s always more information and new developments.
“The coronavirus that’s circulating now is a different kind of subtype of other coronaviruses that are circulating that are known to — we’ve all been infected by different coronaviruses. But this is a new one.”
And new research suggests that COVID-19 has different strains of it, resulting from mutations of the virus.
“They’re looking at different strains such as there’s one variant called 614 G that has known to be the dominant strain in the United States, and they think that it might be spreading more rapidly,” Nero said.
But there’s no need to panic because if you contract the virus, the treatment’s still the same.
“For the everyday person, it probably doesn’t have a big influence on how they’re treated or what they need to do,” said Dr. Nero.
Or how often they’ll need to get vaccinated.
“At this point, we don’t see the variation in COVID that we see in influenza where they have to come up with a new shot every year," Nero said. "As far as we know for now, it seems like COVID is much more stable and mutates a lot less rapidly, so the vaccine that’s developed or the number of vaccines shouldn’t have to change every year.”
There’s still a lot of research to be done about the different strains and the virus in general.