Unvaccinated People are Covid 19 Variant Factories

People who have not been vaccinated against COVID-19 not only risk their health but are Variant factories. Dr. William Schaffner, a professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center said that Unvaccinated people are potential Variant factories.

The more unvaccinated people there are, the more opportunities for the virus to multiply. Variant evolve in the body of a person who is infected with the coronavirus.Schaffner said that when it does, it mutates, and it could throw off a Variant mutation that is even more serious down the road.

Viruses, including the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, endure mutations, and while some mutations may harm the virus, others could help it. For example, a mutation could help a virus be more transmissible.When the virus spreads to another person, the mutation will replicate and also spread, and if it’s successful and continues to spread, it becomes a Variant.

Unvaccinated people provide the opportunity for the mutation to continue to replicate.Andrew Pekosz, a microbiologist and immunologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health said that as  mutations come up in viruses, the ones that persist are the ones that make it easier for the virus to spread in the population. Every time the virus changes, that gives the virus a different platform to add more mutations. Now we have viruses that spread more efficiently.These four include Covid 19 Alpha, first discovered in the UK, Beta, first discovered in South Africa, Gamma, first discovered in Brazil, and Delta, first discovered in India, pose risks because they are either more transmissible, cause worse disease, or can evade immune protection.