March 13, 2025- When the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic first emerged, many scientists thought it would evolve slowly, like other coronaviruses, but that was one of the first big surprises from the virus dubbed SARS-CoV-2, according to NPR, the virus instead rapidly evolved. SARS-CoV-2 has been evolving the ability to evade the immune system about twice as fast as the fastest-evolving flu virus, according to NPR, punctuated by several large evolutionary jumps, scientists say. Most notoriously, SARS-CoV-2 jumped a huge evolutionary hurdle to spawn the omicron variant, which spread around the world with shocking speed.
The pace of the virus’s evolution hasn’t changed much. The virus has kept evolving, averaging more than a dozen significant changes every year as the virus begets new additions to the rogue’s gallery of variants.