The first 11 months of the Covid-19 pandemic have seen very little ‘important’ genetic change in the hundreds of thousands of sequenced virus genomes, according to a study conducted by the researchers at the University of Glasgow.

First author Dr. Oscar MacLean explained: “This does not mean no changes have occurred, mutations of no evolutionary significance accumulate and ‘surf’ along the millions of transmission events like they do in all viruses.”

The researchers further elaborated in their study that some changes in the virus can have an effect. For instance, the Spike replacement D614G, which has been found to enhance transmissibility and certain other tweaks of virus biology, scattered over its genome.

The authors stated that the properties that make the virus more lethal and contagious have probably evolved in bats prior to spillover to humans.

One of the researchers of the study speculated that the increased rate of evolution at the end of 2020 was associated with more heavily mutated lineages. This was also because the immunological profile of the human population has changed.

The virus towards the end of 2020 was increasingly coming into contact with existing host immunity as the numbers of previously infected people are now high.

The researchers believe that the current vaccines will continue to work against most of the circulating variants. However, the more time that passes, and the bigger the differential between vaccinated and not-vaccinated numbers of people, the more opportunity there will be for vaccine escape.

The study, published in the journal PLOS Biology Oscar MacLean, was carried out by a collaboration of researchers from the United Kingdom, United States, and Belgium.

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