Doherty Institute Warns Of Supercharged New Covid Variants

Health experts remain cautious over how rapidly the SARS-CoV-2 virus can mutate according to the latest research.

Doherty Institute researchers in Melbourne have found that the virus behind Covid can temporarily speed up its growth in a bid to out-do immune system defences.

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Lead researcher, Dr Sebastian Duchene said that it only takes six weeks for the SARS-CoV-2 virus to mutate into a more lethal new variant, while other viruses often take a year or more to deliver such radical changes.

According to Dr Duchene's latest work, the virus has “short-lived mutational bursts” when it finds an unvaccinated or non-immune population, temporarily speeding up its evolution.

“If you infect a host over a long time, there will be this evolutionary arms race, which means the virus will be forced to innovate a lot and that innovation is ultimately mutation,” Dr Duchene said. 

“It will start coming up with a lot of mutations to evade the immune system within one host … then when it comes out from this host who was infected for a long time to eventually infects somebody else, you have a very different virus because it has undergone this evolutionary arms race for a few weeks.”

Published in Molecular Biology and Evolution, the latest Doherty research discovered that the first four variants – Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta, occurred at a vastly accelerated rate, when they were able to infect individuals for lengthy periods and then spread rapidly through unprotected populations.

“This shows that we need to address the evolution of the virus if we want to minimise the risk of variants appearing,” Dr Duchene said.

“This is a good argument for better vaccine distribution worldwide."

- Dr Duchene

This latest research certainly harks back to protecting vulnerable people and communities around the world, to prevent greater loss of life.

Meanwhile the numbers today so far are:

New South Wales 

New South Wales recorded a drop in cases with 6,014 new infections detected on Sunday, down from 7017 the previous day.

Sadly, seven people have died with Covid. 

There are 1,146 patients admitted to NSW hospitals with Covid, including 58 in intensive care.

Victoria 

Victoria reported 5,052 new infections and sadly 17 people lost their lives with Covid during the last 24-hour reporting period.

Of today's new infections 1,680 were detected through positive PCR tests, while 3,372 cases were reported by Victorians from at-home rapid antigen tests (RATs). 

There are currently 41,038 active coronavirus cases, with 274 people in hospital with Covid, while 38 of those are in ICU and 5 are on ventilators.

Tasmania

Tasmania reported another dip in cases with 676 new infections on Sunday. 

Covid cases have been reported in students from 80 per cent of government schools, Premier Peter Gutwein said on Thursday. 

Currently nine people are in hospital with Covid, while none require a ventilator.

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