A rollercoaster year of varying variants

The World Health Organisation (WHO) decided last year that to limit discrimination against countries that discover variants, new strains would be given names from the Greek alphabet as opposed to being called ‘the Botswana variant’, for example. Only strains that are classified as ‘variants of concern’ are assigned the Greek names.

Scientists say viruses mutate to survive. As they replicate themselves in their hosts, the copies of themselves they make often have ‘mistakes’ or mutations. If a mutation provides to be a survival advantage, then that mutated version becomes the dominant strain within a population. Some of these mutations make the virus more transmissible and deadly, others weaken it.