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The six strains of SARS-CoV-2:
"The SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus is presumably already optimized to affect human beings, and this explains its low evolutionary change," explains Federico Giorgi, a researcher at Unibo and coordinator of the study. "This means that the treatments we are developing, including a vaccine, might be effective against all the virus strains."
Currently, there are six strains of coronavirus. The original one is the L strain, that appeared in Wuhan in December 2019. Its first mutation—the S strain—appeared at the beginning of 2020, while, since mid-January 2020, we have had strains V and G. To date strain G is the most widespread: it mutated into strains GR and GH at the end of February 2020.
Globally, strains G, GH and GR are constantly increasing. Strain S can be found in some restricted areas in the U.S. and Spain. The L and V strains are gradually disappearing.
Journal Reference:
Mercatelli, Daniele, Giorgi, Federico M.. Geographic and Genomic Distribution of SARS-CoV-2 Mutations, Frontiers in Microbiology (DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2020.01800)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2020, @09:47AM
That's not how strains or mutations work. The proteins control whether the vaccine will be effective enough. Not every genetic mutation leads to phenotype changes or different proteins, not every protein change nullifies immune response, and not every strain has a different set of proteins. And we don't have to guess at this either. People have done the analysis of mutation rate and strains and all that. Right now, it appears that one vaccine can hit the entire SARS-CoV-2 species because the strains, while different, still aren't different enough because it is so young. Sure there are probably tens of thousands of substrains out there but they appear to be relatively conserved when you do the analysis.
What I really suspect has happened is she has looked at the much older Coronaviruses and how they don't have a vaccine and then mistakenly generalized to anything that falls under that entire family classification. Despite the fact that SARS-CoV-2 has important differences from others in the family that affect the ability to make a vaccine at all and different incentives and history in research that affects the creation speed, efficacy, and effectiveness of a vaccine candidate. SARS-CoV-2 is not the flu, it is not HIV, or Ebola, MERS, or even hCoV-229E, and generalizing from them to it is an easy way to come to wrong conclusions.