• Question: why the covid turns into another virus every time like the omicron

    Asked by anon-311596 on 10 Feb 2022.
    • Photo: Valerie Vancollie

      Valerie Vancollie answered on 10 Feb 2022:

      SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind Covid-19, doesn’t turn into another virus when we get new variants, but it does mutate. This is because changes to it’s RNA happen when it replicates. This can happen to any organism with genetic material, whether it be RNA or DNA. It happens to humans as well and can be cause of cancer.

      When changes happen they are called mutations. Some mutations are good for the virus as it helps it spread better or become more infectious, while some are bad and some make no difference. The bad ones generally vanish as those viruses don’t compete as well and so don’t spread as far. The mutations that help the virus spread or infect people will spread far and wide to become new variants as they will overtake the old variant.

      When a set of mutations starts to appear that are spreading faster, we call it a variant of concern and monitor it closely. These variants get names like Delta or Omicron so we can monitor them easily and speak about them.

      Why it happens is because of evolution. Animals and plants evolve like this too, but because we have longer lifespans, we don’t normally see the evolution as you can do with viruses or bacteria that have much shorter lifespans and so evolve quicker.

    • Photo: Melanie Krause

      Melanie Krause answered on 13 Feb 2022:

      Hi 🙂
      Actually it doesn’t really turn into a different virus. Most of the virus is still the same but it changes a small part of the surface proteins on the virus which means it can not be recognised by the body anymore as well, even after vaccination (but still well enough that you usually don’t get very sick if you are vaccinated).
      That viruses mutate is pretty normal.. especially if they are very far spread (which SARS-CoV-2 is). They don’t ‘spell check’ their DNA the same way human cells do so mistakes happen often.. and sometimes these mistakes are actually good for the virus.. like when Omicron could partly circumvent the vaccination.

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