OREANDA-NEWS. Associate Professor of the Russian National Research Medical University named after N.I. Pirogov Mikhail Rozanov said in an interview with the radio station "Moscow Says" that in the future new strains of coronavirus will be massively detected.

He noted that currently there are a large number of "mutants" of the coronavirus, but now there are available means of detecting them, which were not there before. Thanks to the pandemic, Rozanov pointed out, now more is known about viruses, "science has jumped to the next stage."

“Now large-scale sequencing [nucleotide sequencing. - approx. ed.] viral RNA will identify strains that could have gone unnoticed earlier. New variants of pathogens will pop out like the devil out of a snuffbox, ”the expert noted.

Rozanov, commenting on the message about the emergence of a new variant of the coronavirus in the south of France, said that the evolution of COVID-19 in the human population is not unique, but it is accelerating, since the virus has not previously contacted humans and is now actively mutating. In his opinion, the newly identified strain and omicron are not related to each other.

He said that the nature of its occurrence is unknown, but its evolution followed the path of changing the S-protein and indicates that the virus is evading immunity.

The new strain from France was named B.1.640.2. Marseille's doctors noted that 46 mutations were identified in the new version. So far, there is no data on the level of threat or infectivity of this strain.