Kai KupferschmidtScience's COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center and the Heising-Simons Foundation.It’s only a tiny change.
At some point early in the pandemic, one of the 30,000 letters in the genome of SARS-CoV-2 changed from an A to a G. Today, that mutation, at position 23,403, has spread around the world.
It is found in the vast majority of newly sequenced viruses and has become the center of a burning scientific question: Has the mutation become so common because it helps the virus spread faster?
Or is it just coincidence?More than 6 months into the pandemic, the virus’ potential to evolve in a nastier direction—or, if we’re lucky, become more benign—is unclear.