Speaker 1: Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day since coronavirus
Speaker 1: was declared a global pandemic. Our main story. Some new
Speaker 1: research suggests the coronavirus could have mutated into a more
Speaker 1: contagious strain, but the truth may not be that cut
Speaker 1: and dry. We'll discuss what it really means that the
Speaker 1: virus is changing, but first, here's what happened today. The
Speaker 1: US unemployment rate more than tripled in April to fourteen
Speaker 1: point seven in what was the harshest downturn in history
Speaker 1: for American workers. Employers cut twenty point five million jobs.
Speaker 1: We now have the highest jobless rate since the Great Depression.
Speaker 1: The losses were brought on by coronavirus force in the
Speaker 1: economy to a halt two months ago. They erase a
Speaker 1: decade of job growth and show how precarious employment is
Speaker 1: for huge swaths of Americans. The job's report showed an
Speaker 1: outsize impact on lower paid workers, as well as women
Speaker 1: and minorities. Spain reported its biggest increase in new cases
Speaker 1: in nearly a week, as the country goes through the
Speaker 1: first phase of a plan to relax its lockdown after
Speaker 1: eight weeks of confinement Portugal, which began easing confinement measures
Speaker 1: on Monday, reported a bigger increase in new cases for
Speaker 1: a third day on Friday. New complaints alleged chip maker
Speaker 1: Intel compromised worker safety at some of its factories to
Speaker 1: keep churning out semiconductors. In the midst of the pandemic,
Speaker 1: Intel kept staff and an Arizona plant working closely within
Speaker 1: ployees who had tested positive, according to people who work there.
Speaker 1: The sources say factory managers also didn't test workers and
Speaker 1: dismissed concerns that social distancing guidelines were not being followed properly.
Speaker 1: The company said it responded with new policies to improve
Speaker 1: employee safety and kept factory output high because its products
Speaker 1: are essential. Finally, the World Health Organization discussed its latest
Speaker 1: thinking on where the virus came from. Today, the novel
Speaker 1: coronavirus belongs to a group of viruses that begin in bats.
Speaker 1: It probably arrived in humans through contact with animals they
Speaker 1: were raising as food, according to the w h O,
Speaker 1: though it's unclear through which species. Cats and ferrets are
Speaker 1: susceptible to the virus, and dogs to a lesser extent,
Speaker 1: and it's important to find which animals can get it
Speaker 1: to avoid creating a reserve are in another species. President
Speaker 1: Donald Trump has suggested that the virus came from a
Speaker 1: lab in China, but scientists who have studied the issue
Speaker 1: maintained that the virus originated in an animal and probably
Speaker 1: entered the human population. In November and now our main story.
Speaker 1: Last week, researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory released
Speaker 1: alarming news at least one variant of the virus that
Speaker 1: causes COVID nineteen had significantly mutated to become more contagious.
Speaker 1: If true, this would have major implications. A new variant could,
Speaker 1: for example, hamper efforts to develop a vaccine, or mean
Speaker 1: that people who have already had COVID nineteen might face
Speaker 1: a greater risk of getting it again. But critics said
Speaker 1: that didn't support such a big claim, and some accuse
Speaker 1: the scientists of sensationalizing. Reporter Kristin V. Brown discusses the
Speaker 1: implications of a changing virus and what we should make
Speaker 1: of this and other controversial findings. So what does it
Speaker 1: mean when a virus mutates? So viruses are constantly mutating.
Speaker 1: Viruses replicate by copying themselves, and they are not very
Speaker 1: good at it, so when they copy themselves, they make
Speaker 1: these little, tiny errors, and most of the time those
Speaker 1: errors are insignificant. They don't really mean anything, don't change
Speaker 1: the way the virus operates. Occasionally you get these changes
Speaker 1: that are what we call a functionally significant mutation. And
Speaker 1: that's where things get interesting. When do these mutations actually
Speaker 1: mean something for us as humans? They call them functionally
Speaker 1: significant mutations because the rusus mutated in a way that
Speaker 1: makes it behave differently. So that behavior could mean all
Speaker 1: different kinds of things. It could mean that it can
Speaker 1: enter a new species, right, It could mean that it
Speaker 1: affects different kinds of people. It could mean that it
Speaker 1: latches on to its host cell in a more efficient way.
Speaker 1: But something about that mutation means that the virus now
Speaker 1: behaves differently from the version of the virus that existed before.
Speaker 1: And those are the mutations that scientists, drug makers, policymakers
Speaker 1: are really looking out for when it comes to stars
Speaker 1: COVI two, because those are the mutations that could change
Speaker 1: the way we respond to the virus. Have we seen
Speaker 1: mutations already happen with the coronavirus, So we've cataloged over
Speaker 1: seven thousand coronavirus mutations, and there are probably many, many
Speaker 1: thousands more that we have not cataloged. But a paper
Speaker 1: last week caused a bit of a star because it
Speaker 1: suggested that one of those mutations was functionally significant. So
Speaker 1: the coronavirus has these little spiky pieces, and those spiky
Speaker 1: bits are proteins that allow a virus to latch onto
Speaker 1: a host cell. So the mutation these researchers found was
Speaker 1: in that part of the virus, in the part that
Speaker 1: latches on to a host cell, and that's why they
Speaker 1: took a closer look at it. Why are they focusing
Speaker 1: on this mutation? What the theorist here is there's the
Speaker 1: original form of the virus that came out of Asia,
Speaker 1: and there is what appears to be a new form
Speaker 1: of the virus in Europe with this mutation, and that
Speaker 1: European form of the virus seems to be gaining a
Speaker 1: lot of ground. So they theorized that this mutation in
Speaker 1: the part of the virus that latches on to host
Speaker 1: cells was actually making the virus able to spread more efficiently.
Speaker 1: That's a pretty big claim that all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you have this virus that's even more robust than the
Speaker 1: original Asian stars Kobe two, which is already extremely contagious.
Speaker 1: So you're saying that there are actually two different forms
Speaker 1: of the virus. The form that emerged in China is
Speaker 1: different than the form of the virus that we saw
Speaker 1: in say Italy. Researchers are able to use these mutations,
Speaker 1: these really small incremental mutations, and basically do like a
Speaker 1: family tree for the virus. Right, and as they've done
Speaker 1: this family tree, it's seemed like there are two forms
Speaker 1: of the virus, the original one that came out of
Speaker 1: Asia and one that has emerged in Europe as the
Speaker 1: virus has mutated over time, and interestingly, in the United States,
Speaker 1: we actually have both forms of the virus. On the
Speaker 1: West coast, we seem to primarily have gotten the Asian
Speaker 1: form of the virus, and on the East coast it's
Speaker 1: the European form. And we've seen both sort of mix
Speaker 1: and mingle here in the US. So there are what
Speaker 1: appears to be these two forms of the virus, and
Speaker 1: the researchers were looking at the European form and trying
Speaker 1: to figure out if there is anything significant about it
Speaker 1: that might explain why the European form has overtaken this
Speaker 1: Asian form in some places, is there any way to know,
Speaker 1: for example, if you have COVID nineteen, if you have
Speaker 1: the Asian form or the European form, they would have
Speaker 1: to sequence the virus, right, because these variants are still
Speaker 1: tiny bits of genetic code. So I don't think at
Speaker 1: this point that you can go get a coronavirus test
Speaker 1: and they can be like, oh, you have the Asian coronavirus.
Speaker 1: What's the takeaway in terms of knowing that there are
Speaker 1: these multiple forms. So the big question right now is
Speaker 1: actually doesn't matter that there are two forms. It's interesting
Speaker 1: from the perspective of then you can track how the
Speaker 1: virus moves around the world, right, We can track the
Speaker 1: virus went to Europe from Asia and then evolved to
Speaker 1: become slightly different, and then that that virus came to
Speaker 1: the United States. So that helps epidemiologists understand how the
Speaker 1: virus is moving. And that's interesting and important just for
Speaker 1: basic research to allow us to get a handle on
Speaker 1: how this virus operates. But the big question is does
Speaker 1: the specific mutation mean anything? And like many things with
Speaker 1: the novel coronavirus, at the current moment, we actually just
Speaker 1: don't know, and that's what's kind of scary, because it
Speaker 1: is very possible what these researchers Posit is very possible
Speaker 1: that there is a mutation in this European virus that
Speaker 1: has allowed it to spread more quickly, and that that
Speaker 1: mutation is in this really key part of the virus.
Speaker 1: The key part of the virus it'sin is the part
Speaker 1: that attaches to a human cell. Right. That's also the
Speaker 1: part of the virus that we target when we make vaccines.
Speaker 1: So if you have a virus that has mutative there's
Speaker 1: a question, for example, of will that vaccine now work
Speaker 1: only your pan virus? And we don't know the answer
Speaker 1: to those questions right now. But these researchers were like, Hey,
Speaker 1: this looks really interesting. It could potentially be important. We
Speaker 1: need to look at this so we know that we're
Speaker 1: developing treatments and vaccines that actually work for the form
Speaker 1: of the virus it's becoming more dominant. And how did
Speaker 1: drugmakers react to the news about this mutation? So interestingly,
Speaker 1: drugmakers at this point feel like this particular mutation does
Speaker 1: not matter, that they have not seen anything that suggests
Speaker 1: that the versions of vaccines that they're developing will not
Speaker 1: work with the European form of the virus. So there's
Speaker 1: all this debate over how meaningful this area of the
Speaker 1: virus is in terms of the significance of that mutation.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like there's still a lot of confidence
Speaker 1: that if a vaccine can be created, it can treat
Speaker 1: both the European and the Asian form of the virus.
Speaker 1: Right right now, drug maker rs do not see anything
Speaker 1: that worries them, anything that makes them think that the
Speaker 1: version of vaccines they are developing based on the Asian
Speaker 1: form of the virus will not treat the European version.
Speaker 1: But there's debate, there's questions that need to be answered
Speaker 1: to ensure that that's true, because if they turn out
Speaker 1: to be wrong, then we can have really catastrophic outcomes.
Speaker 1: That was Bloomberg's Kristen V. Brown and that's our show today.
Speaker 1: For coverage of the outbreak from one bureaus around the world,
Speaker 1: visit bloomberg dot com slash coronavirus and if you like
Speaker 1: the show, please leave us a review and a rating
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to
Speaker 1: help more listeners find our global reporting. The prognosis The
Speaker 1: edition is hosted by Me Laura Carlson. The show was
Speaker 1: produced by Me topher Foreheaz, Jordan Gospoure, and Magnus Henrickson.
Speaker 1: Today's main story was reported by Kristin V. Brown. Original
Speaker 1: music by Leo sidran Our editors are Francesco Levi and
Speaker 1: Reck Shawn. Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening.