What is the possibility of mutation for SARS-CoV-2?

SARS-CoV-2 is the seventh coronavirus known to infect humans; SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 can cause severe disease, whereas HKU1, NL63, OC43 and 229E are associated with mild symptoms (Corman et al., 2018). Detailed understanding of how an animal virus jumped species boundaries to infect humans so productively will help in the prevention of future zoonotic events. Forster et al. (2020) showed that the first virus genome that was sampled on 24 December 2019 already is distant from the root type according to the bat coronavirus outgroup rooting. The described core mutations have been confirmed by a variety of contributing laboratories and sequencing platforms and can be considered reliable (Forster et al., 2020). The phylogeographic patterns in the network are potentially affected by distinctive migratory histories, founder events, and sample size. Nevertheless, it would be prudent to consider the possibility that mutational variants might modulate the clinical presentation and spread of the disease.