Covid variants: How many coronavirus strains are there? Are they the same as variants?

Coronavirus: UK heading for 'population immunity' says expert

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Covid variants have started spreading within the UK community, according to researchers charged with tracking coronavirus. While cases remain low, the South Africa, Brazil and Kent variants remain a threat, due to increased infectivity. Surge testing will help identify more cases, but some people may still have questions about what health authorities want to find.

How many Covid strains are there?

Researchers often regard virus variants as a scientific inevitability.

As living organisms, they adapt and evolve to suit new environments and strengthen their bid for survival.

The South African, Kent and Brazilian variants each adopted the E484K variant which theoretically allows them to infect more hosts.

Now, coronavirus has different mutations, strains and variants, which may have some people muddled.

Viruses have to establish a stronghold in a host’s cells to take biological material, which it uses to replicate.

Replication allows the virus to spread through the body, and sometimes results in “errors” according to Lara Herrero and Eugene Medzokere, researchers at Griffith University.

Replicated errors are, in fact, mutations, which cause inexact copies of the virus known as variants, they wrote for The Conversation.

Successive or significant mutations which change the fabric of a variant while keeping its base properties are strains.

Strains are variants which look the same but ultimately behave differently than the parent virus.

COVID-19 currently only has variants, but human coronavirus, the family it belongs to, has several.

Scientists have divided them into four groups; alpha, beta, gamma and delta.

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Seven of these viruses are known to infect people, and they include:

Alpha

• 229E
• NL63

Beta

• OC43
• HKU1
• SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19)

The remaining two beta strains are among the most notorious and preceded COVID-19.

MERS-CoV is the name of the coronavirus strain which causes Middle-East Respiratory syndrome.

The species never made it to the pandemic stage, but killed 881 people, with a fatality rate of 34 percent.

SARS-CoV causes Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, a similarly vicious virus which previously circulated around Asia.

One major outbreak began in China in 2002 and infected 8,098 people, 774 of whom died.

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