A virologist says COVID-19 virus is changing every couple of weeks — but there isn't enough data from India to say whether it is 'milder'

The virus is changing, albeit not very fast. In fact, there are relatively few changes in the viral genome. At present it is hard to distinguish these changes from the noise/errors that are generated by the sequencing process itself. So we must avoid the temptation to read too much into them.

This is an excerpt from an article originally published in the Observer Research Foundation.

Very roughly, one in 30,000 of the positions on the virus changes every 1-2 weeks(link is external) as the virus continues to replicate and spread. There are particular changes that have been noted in different geographical clusters, and studies/experiments need to be carried out to understand their significance. For example, do these changes reflect a common origin or have they provided some advantage to the virus – for instance, do they help the virus infect, grow, spread or escape the immune system? While these are important and interesting questions, sequencing viruses alone cannot conclusively tell us this. Currently there is no strong evidence for a more virulent or conversely a milder strain of the novel coronavirus. We do not yet have enough sequences from India to do any robust analysis.

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