A virus is a small infectious agent made up of genetic material, either DNA or RNA.
They can only multiply inside the cells of other living things.
The cell they multiply in is called the host cell.
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As viruses move from person to person in search of survival, they can mutateor changeover time.
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How Do Viruses Mutate?
However, this can vary from virus to virus.
How Quickly Do Viruses Mutate?
How Does This Affect Vaccines?
Viruses mutate at different rates and can affect vaccines differently, depending on the virus.
What Does This Mean for COVID-19?
This is due to the antibodies produced by the immune system as a result of the vaccine.
Therefore, viral mutations should not make vaccines ineffective.
How a variant is classified depends on classified based on their level of threat to the population.
Mutations vs. Variants vs.
Strains
These terms are often used interchangeably, but they have different meanings.
Think of them as building blocksmutations lead to variants and variants lead to strains.
It can, however, lead to variants and eventually even new strains of a virus.
Understanding how viruses evolve can inform preventive strategies, such as vaccination.
Further, the COVID-19 vaccines have proven to be protective against the variants that have emerged so far.
The efficacy of a vaccine against certain variants of a virus depends on the virus itself.
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