| All viruses mutate constantly if and when they are replicating in a host body. The more people infected, the more chances the virus has to evolve through the process known as mutation.
“The longer somebody has that virus, and the longer that virus has to deal with people’s antibody responses, the bigger the chance is that variants will emerge,” said Penny Moore, an expert in viruses at South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases.
Around the world, on any given day, the virus is infecting people and mutating in their bodies. When those mutations give the virus some sort of advantage — the ability to replicate faster, or to hide from the immune system — that version will outcompete others.
“The longer somebody has that virus, and the longer that virus has to deal with people’s antibody responses, the bigger the chance is that variants will emerge,” Moore said in a webinar hosted earlier this month by the International Antiviral Society.
This is why public health officials the world over are clamoring for everyone to get fully vaccinated as quickly as possible. People who don’t get infected don’t cook an ever-changing virus in their bodies.
“It’s the only way we are going to be able to get rid of the variants, is to lower the number of infections,” Moore said.
And evidence indicates the current vaccines used in the U.S. and many other countries work well to protect people against ever getting infected in the first place.
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