Around the world, hope for a return to normalcy is pinned on a vaccine, the “ultimate weapon,” as it’s been called by officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. But it’s still unclear how successful a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, can be.
A lot will depend on how the virus mutates. Broadly, there are two ways mutations can play out.
Scenario 1: The coronavirus is unable to evade a vaccine
A successful vaccine could stop the virus dead in its tracks, but only if the virus doesn’t mutate its way around the shot. Here’s what scientists are watching for:
Like all viruses, SARS-CoV-2 is mutating as it passes from person to person. A “mutation” is just a change in a virus’s genetic code. Most mutations don’t really change how the virus functions.
Below is a glimpse at an imaginary virus. It’s doing what all viruses do: entering a cell, hijacking the cell’s machinery and using it to make many copies of itself.
Sometimes, small errors — or mutations — can show up in that replication. Those errors accumulate over time as the virus spreads from cell to cell and person to person.
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