Coronavirus's Mutation Rate on the Rise?

Up to now, Covid variants have measured up to about 25 mutations/year. However, a new variant, C.1.2, has pushed that up to about 42/year, according to a joint study by South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases and the KwaZulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform. The variant evolved from the C.1 variant and was first found in May 2021, in South Africa’s Mpumalanga and Gauteng provinces. It has spread to six of South Africa’s nine provinces, and also to Mauritius, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Portugal, Switzerland, and New Zealand. The study of the variant’s many mutations (somewhere between 44 and 59 mutations) finds that some are associated with a) increased transmissibility and b) the ability to evade antibodies (‘vaccine escape’), giving rise to media stories jumping to the conclusion that C.1.2 has both of those properties. However, the study has not made that finding, just that C.1.2 bears a close tracking — and that the world doesn’t need viruses to increase their mutation activity.