{"id":9033,"date":"2025-03-25T17:36:58","date_gmt":"2025-03-25T22:36:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=9033"},"modified":"2025-03-25T17:37:01","modified_gmt":"2025-03-25T22:37:01","slug":"what-the-covid-19-pandemic-tells-us-about-how-viruses-evolve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2025\/03\/25\/what-the-covid-19-pandemic-tells-us-about-how-viruses-evolve\/","title":{"rendered":"What the COVID-19 pandemic tells us about how viruses evolve"},"content":{"rendered":"
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NPR<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

arly in the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists predicted the coronavirus would mutate slowly<\/a>. They were wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hundreds of thousands of viral mutations<\/a> and multiple seasonal waves<\/a> later, researchers now know why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turns out, SARS-CoV-2 \u2014 the virus that causes the disease COVID-19 \u2014 was making evolutionary leaps and bounds in one specific group of people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“When the virus jumps from person to person, it gets about two mutations a month,” says Sarah Zhang<\/a>, a health writer for The Atlantic, who has been covering the coronavirus pandemic since it began.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In February, she wrote a piece<\/a> comparing several studies indicating that in the immune system of an immunocompromised person, the SARS-CoV-2 virus might survive for weeks, even months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\nr SzXcR PLze FKJ<\/a><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NPR arly in the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists predicted the coronavirus would mutate slowly. They were wrong. Hundreds of thousands of viral mutations and multiple seasonal waves later, researchers now know why. Turns out, SARS-CoV-2 \u2014 the virus that causes the disease COVID-19 \u2014 was making evolutionary leaps and bounds in one specific group of people. “When […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-covid","category-science-and-tech"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9033"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9034,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9033\/revisions\/9034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}