Canada Coronavirus: Rising fears about variants spreading even as provinces relax measures

Global News shows that there's still a long way to go to get a COVID-19 vaccine for every Canadian who really wants one. 

However, with new virus variants continuing to spread, the government is urging people to be cautious, with Canada's chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam encouraging people to keep to a "steady pace" and support "Team Vaccine" by not providing "Team Variant" to gain any more ground. 

Eric Sorensen reports on the spread of variants and what could be in store for Canada as greater warmer weather approaches. 

There are many Coronaviruses out there. Coronaviruses didn’t create themselves recently. They are a large family of dangerous viruses that seem to have been around for a long time. Many of them can cause a variety of illnesses, from a small mild cough to severe respiratory illnesses.

The new (novel) coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is one of several known to successfully infect humans. It is possible that this virus has been around for some time in certain animals. Sometimes, a virus in animals attaches to people. This deadly dangerous virus existed for some time before humans "discovered" it.

Human Coronavirus Types:

Scientists have certainly divided coronaviruses into 4 sub-groupings, called: alpha, beta, gamma, and delta. 7 of these viruses can infect people:

229E (alpha)

NL63 (alpha)

OC43 (beta)

HKU1 (beta

MERS-CoV, a beta virus that causes Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS)

SARS-CoV, a beta virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)

SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19

Virus Variants can happen. Dangerous Coronaviruses have all their genetic material in RNA (ribonucleic acid). RNA has some similarities to DNA, but they aren’t the same.

When viruses infect you, they attach to your cells, get inside them, and make copies of their RNA, which helps them spread. If there’s a copying mistake or deviation, the RNA gets changed in some way. These are the virus mutations. These changes certainly happen randomly and by accident. This is what usually happens to viruses as they multiply and spread around the world.