Covid 19 & Some Of Its Variants and Strains of Interest

4 min readNov 29, 2021

Coronavirus, but what is a coronavirus. Is it only covid-19? In most cases, if you ask someone, they will answer it’s covid-19. It’s a misconception. A coronavirus is a group of viruses. There are a few types of human coronavirus and some animal coronavirus. Some of the coronaviruses are just common cold.

229E (alpha coronavirus) NL63 (alpha coronavirus) OC43 (beta coronavirus) HKU1 (beta coronavirus)

These are some of the most common coronaviruses that just cause common cold problems. Then there are the problematic ones.

MERS-CoV (the beta coronavirus that causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS) SARS-CoV (the beta coronavirus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS) SARS-CoV-2 (the novel coronavirus that causes coronavirus disease 2019, or COVID-19)

Among them, novel coronavirus is causing worldwide panic and devastation now. To be true it sometimes feels like it was designed to destroy economic stability. This might be the reason why there are so many conspiracy theories regarding this type of coronavirus. There is one serious problem with novel coronavirus, it has too many variants and strains. Let’s first check out what variant and strain is.

The secret of variant and strain lies in how viruses multiply. Coronavirus uses RNA to take over host cells to multiply. In this process, some mutations may occur. If any mutation occurs that changes in any amino acid then it may show some dissimilarities with the parent virus. In this way variant and strain come to be.

Variant:

In the process of replication many mutations may occur in a virus. This version of that virus is called a variant. Novel coronavirus has many variants. The virus tends to change in people as such it’s common for covid-19 to have thousands of variants present in the world.

Strain:

When a variant shows significant changes in characteristics and it’s hard to match it with its mother source, it’s called a strain. Scientists are concerned with a new strain of covid-19 first discovered in South Africa. It has raised the question of vaccine validity.

Some major variants of Covid-19:

Alpha:

It was first identified in the UK. many of the countries in the world continued their travel open for the UK, as a result, this variant was spread in more than 50 countries very quickly.

Beta:

Fiirst discovered in South Africa. It was first believed to be the curse of Africa and it was also believed that it will cause massive death in the poor countries of Africa. It didn’t turn out to be that scary after all. It may have something to do with people’s faster recovery speed. It was spread to 20 countries.

Gamma:

First identified in Brazil and then spread to 10 other countries. It caused much death in Brazil.

Delta:

Curse for India. It showed how little the govt was ready for this new variant. Its tendency to result in more respiratory problems proved to be very costly for India. A lot of people died due to a lack of oxygen and medications. It caused a huge death toll for India’s neighboring countries. Where people of the South Asian region showed lower severe cases for other corona variants, this particular one proved to be very costly. Now, most of the new corona cases are from this variant.

Delta plus:

It was feared to be the new killed mode for corona but fortunately for us, vaccines proved useful for this covid-19 variant too.

One dangerous new strain of covid-19, Omicron:

First discovered in South Africa, this new strain of Covid-19 is frightening scientists. It has a significant change in amino acid and as such it is dangerous. Most of the vaccines use this RNA and amino acid pattern to stop corona from infecting people. With the new changes of this strain, it is not sure if vaccines will be very effective. It is feared that vaccines may not work for this strain. If that is to happen, our economic recovery may very well get the last hit before dying.

Steps are needed to stop this new variant from spreading. We can’t make the same mistakes we have made in the past. Let’s all be safe from covid-19 and all its variants and strains.

Originally published at https://www.techolifestyle.com on November 29, 2021.