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LONDON – Doctors started noticing the change last month as the UK’s new variant of the coronavirus spread. In hospital intensive care units, they were seeing more young people and women with severe cases of Covid-19, a disease that previously inflicted its worst symptoms largely on elderly patients and men.
The change – now backed by statistical studies – is part of an urgent puzzle that worries UK public health officials as they rush to figure out a strain of the virus that is more transmissible and, according to some studies, could be deadlier than previous versions.
According to scientists, one of the first hypotheses is that one of the virus’s genetic mutations allows more cells to be invaded better inside the body, leading to serious illness in people who, with previous variants of Covid-19, would have had only mild or no symptoms. .
David Strain, a doctor and instructor at the University of Exeter School of Medicine who also treats patients with Covid-19, said initial research painted a picture of a burglar-like variant of the virus that improved and which broke into vulnerable cells. in this case, not houses.
“We think that’s why it makes people sicker and more transmissible,” Dr Strain said.
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