How exactly did the delta variant evolve into the highly infectious strain that the world is now struggling to contain? Scientists have a few theories.
"Some individuals have a persistent or a prolonged or a chronic infection. Then you have accelerated evolution inside that individual," said Dr. Richard Lessells, an infectious disease expert at Kwazulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform in Durban, South Africa, where he researches beta, the virus variant first identified in the country.
"It's like the mother of all selections in the world. It's the biggest experiment that's ever happened," Krogan said."We're forcing the virus to mutate, which it loves to do."In this photo illustration a medical syringe is seen in front of a microscopic image of coronavirus. While the vaccines are holding up well against the variants in terms of protecting against hospitalization and death, the delta variant is a bit more likely to infect fully vaccinated people -- so-called breakthrough cases -- than past variants.
While alpha, beta, gamma and delta all have mutations on their spike proteins, they are all different mutations, Garcia-Sastre explained."That's what's interesting. They gain a better ability to process the spike and then a better ability to enter and replicate.""Everyone is focused on spike. Yes, spike is playing a role, no question about it, but there are other mutations that could be equally as important as spike," said Krogan.
Importantly, as far as scientists can tell, the alpha variant did not evolve into the delta variant. Instead, the two variants developed independently of one another in countries where high community transmission was occurring.
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