On Jul. 2, 2020, In a new study, an international team of scientists show that the G version of the virus has come to dominate cases around the world. They report that this mutation does not make the virus more deadly, but it does help the virus copy itself, resulting in a higher viral load, or “titer,” in patients.

The new study, led by scientists at Duke University, Los Alamos National Laboratory and La Jolla Institute (LJI) was published in Cell.

“We are focused on the human immune response because LJI is the headquarters for the Coronavirus Immunotherapy Consortium (CoVIC), a global collaboration to understand and advance antibody treatments against the virus,” says LJI Professor Erica Ollmann Saphire, Ph.D., who leads the Gates Foundation-supported CoVIC.

Their experiments showed that the human immune response could neutralize the new G virus as well or better than the original D virus. This meant the immune system didn’t need to produce more antibodies or better antibodies against the G virus, even though this variant was more successful at spreading. This finding was in line with what doctors saw in COVID-19 patients.

“The clinical data in this paper from the University of Sheffield showed that even though patients with the new G virus carried more copies of the virus than patients infected with D, there wasn’t a corresponding increase in the severity of illness,” says Saphire.

Saphire says the novel coronavirus could be successful precisely because many patients do only get a mild version, or no symptoms at all.

“The virus doesn’t ‘want’ to be more lethal. It ‘wants’ to be more transmissible,” Saphire explains. “A virus ‘wants’ you to help it spread copies of itself. It ‘wants’ you to go to work and school and social gatherings and transmit it to new hosts. Of course, a virus is inanimate—it doesn’t ‘want’ anything. But a surviving virus is one that disseminates further and more efficiently. A virus that kills its host rapidly doesn’t go as far—think of cases of Ebola. A virus that lets its host go about their business will disseminate better—like with the common cold.”