Is the Virus Getting Worse?

for American workers. Employers cut twenty point five million jobs. We now have the highest jobless rate since the Great Depression. The losses were brought on by coronavirus force in the economy to a halt two months ago. They erase a decade of job growth and show how precarious employment is for huge swaths of Americans. The job's report showed an outsize impact on lower paid workers, as well as women

and minorities. Spain reported its biggest increase in new cases in nearly a week, as the country goes through the first phase of a plan to relax its lockdown after eight weeks of confinement Portugal, which began easing confinement measures on Monday, reported a bigger increase in new cases for a third day on Friday. New complaints alleged chip maker Intel compromised worker safety at some of its factories to

keep churning out semiconductors. In the midst of the pandemic, Intel kept staff and an Arizona plant working closely within ployees who had tested positive, according to people who work there. The sources say factory managers also didn't test workers and dismissed concerns that social distancing guidelines were not being followed properly. The company said it responded with new policies to improve employee safety and kept factory output high because its products

are essential. Finally, the World Health Organization discussed its latest thinking on where the virus came from. Today, the novel coronavirus belongs to a group of viruses that begin in bats. It probably arrived in humans through contact with animals they were raising as food, according to the w h O, though it's unclear through which species. Cats and ferrets are susceptible to the virus, and dogs to a lesser extent, and it's important to find which animals can get it

to avoid creating a reserve are in another species. President Donald Trump has suggested that the virus came from a lab in China, but scientists who have studied the issue maintained that the virus originated in an animal and probably entered the human population. In November and now our main story. Last week, researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory released alarming news at least one variant of the virus that causes COVID nineteen had significantly mutated to become more contagious.

If true, this would have major implications. A new variant could, for example, hamper efforts to develop a vaccine, or mean that people who have already had COVID nineteen might face a greater risk of getting it again. But critics said that didn't support such a big claim, and some accuse the scientists of sensationalizing. Reporter Kristin V. Brown discusses the implications of a changing virus and what we should make of this and other controversial findings. So what does it

mean when a virus mutates? So viruses are constantly mutating. Viruses replicate by copying themselves, and they are not very good at it, so when they copy themselves, they make these little, tiny errors, and most of the time those errors are insignificant. They don't really mean anything, don't change the way the virus operates. Occasionally you get these changes that are what we call a functionally significant mutation. And that's where things get interesting. When do these mutations actually

mean something for us as humans? They call them functionally significant mutations because the rusus mutated in a way that makes it behave differently. So that behavior could mean all different kinds of things. It could mean that it can enter a new species, right, It could mean that it affects different kinds of people. It could mean that it latches on to its host cell in a more efficient way.

But something about that mutation means that the virus now behaves differently from the version of the virus that existed before. And those are the mutations that scientists, drug makers, policymakers are really looking out for when it comes to stars COVI two, because those are the mutations that could change the way we respond to the virus. Have we seen mutations already happen with the coronavirus, So we've cataloged over seven thousand coronavirus mutations, and there are probably many, many

thousands more that we have not cataloged. But a paper last week caused a bit of a star because it suggested that one of those mutations was functionally significant. So the coronavirus has these little spiky pieces, and those spiky bits are proteins that allow a virus to latch onto a host cell. So the mutation these researchers found was in that part of the virus, in the part that latches on to a host cell, and that's why they took a closer look at it. Why are they focusing

on this mutation? What the theorist here is there's the original form of the virus that came out of Asia, and there is what appears to be a new form of the virus in Europe with this mutation, and that European form of the virus seems to be gaining a lot of ground. So they theorized that this mutation in the part of the virus that latches on to host cells was actually making the virus able to spread more efficiently.

That's a pretty big claim that all of a sudden, you have this virus that's even more robust than the original Asian stars Kobe two, which is already extremely contagious. So you're saying that there are actually two different forms of the virus. The form that emerged in China is different than the form of the virus that we saw in say Italy. Researchers are able to use these mutations, these really small incremental mutations, and basically do like a

family tree for the virus. Right, and as they've done this family tree, it's seemed like there are two forms of the virus, the original one that came out of Asia and one that has emerged in Europe as the virus has mutated over time, and interestingly, in the United States, we actually have both forms of the virus. On the West coast, we seem to primarily have gotten the Asian form of the virus, and on the East coast it's the European form. And we've seen both sort of mix

and mingle here in the US. So there are what appears to be these two forms of the virus, and the researchers were looking at the European form and trying to figure out if there is anything significant about it that might explain why the European form has overtaken this Asian form in some places, is there any way to know, for example, if you have COVID nineteen, if you have the Asian form or the European form, they would have to sequence the virus, right, because these variants are still

tiny bits of genetic code. So I don't think at this point that you can go get a coronavirus test and they can be like, oh, you have the Asian coronavirus. What's the takeaway in terms of knowing that there are these multiple forms. So the big question right now is

actually doesn't matter that there are two forms. It's interesting from the perspective of then you can track how the virus moves around the world, right, We can track the virus went to Europe from Asia and then evolved to become slightly different, and then that that virus came to the United States. So that helps epidemiologists understand how the virus is moving. And that's interesting and important just for basic research to allow us to get a handle on

how this virus operates. But the big question is does the specific mutation mean anything? And like many things with the novel coronavirus, at the current moment, we actually just don't know, and that's what's kind of scary, because it is very possible what these researchers Posit is very possible that there is a mutation in this European virus that has allowed it to spread more quickly, and that that mutation is in this really key part of the virus. The key part of the virus it'sin is the part

that attaches to a human cell. Right. That's also the part of the virus that we target when we make vaccines. So if you have a virus that has mutative there's a question, for example, of will that vaccine now work only your pan virus? And we don't know the answer to those questions right now. But these researchers were like, Hey,

this looks really interesting. It could potentially be important. We need to look at this so we know that we're developing treatments and vaccines that actually work for the form of the virus it's becoming more dominant. And how did drugmakers react to the news about this mutation? So interestingly, drugmakers at this point feel like this particular mutation does not matter, that they have not seen anything that suggests that the versions of vaccines that they're developing will not

work with the European form of the virus. So there's all this debate over how meaningful this area of the virus is in terms of the significance of that mutation. So it sounds like there's still a lot of confidence that if a vaccine can be created, it can treat both the European and the Asian form of the virus.

Right right now, drug maker rs do not see anything that worries them, anything that makes them think that the version of vaccines they are developing based on the Asian form of the virus will not treat the European version. But there's debate, there's questions that need to be answered to ensure that that's true, because if they turn out to be wrong, then we can have really catastrophic outcomes. That was Bloomberg's Kristen V. Brown and that's our show today.

For coverage of the outbreak from one bureaus around the world, visit bloomberg dot com slash coronavirus and if you like the show, please leave us a review and a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to help more listeners find our global reporting. The prognosis The edition is hosted by Me Laura Carlson. The show was produced by Me topher Foreheaz, Jordan Gospoure, and Magnus Henrickson.

Today's main story was reported by Kristin V. Brown. Original music by Leo sidran Our editors are Francesco Levi and Reck Shawn. Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening.