The novel Corona virus mutates around once every two weeks and as a result, regular booster vaccines to fight it a very much a part of our future.

Sharon Peacock, who heads Covid 19 Genomics UK, has sequenced half of all the novel coronavirus genomes so far mapped globally, She says, international cooperation is essential in the battle against it.

It mutates slower than influenza or HIV, but enough to require tweaks to vaccines.

We have to appreciate that we were always going to have to have booster doses.

Immunity to coronavirus doesn't last forever.

We know that.

And we know that from looking at immunity against the common cold, for example.

So we know there are waves of infection over time, so our immunity to coronavirus does Wayne.

So we're always going to be looking at booster doses over time.

But now what we're looking at is the fact that the virus will continue to mutate is inevitable, that that will occur.

But we'll keep ahead of that mutation by having available vaccines that cope with the changes that the virus throws at us.

If you like co UK set up exactly a year ago, is now the world's biggest depository of knowledge about the virus is genetics.

Three main coronavirus variants, which were first identified in Britain, Brazil and South Africa, are under particular scrutiny.

Peacock said she was most worried about the variant from South Africa.

The reason that I'm concerned about that is that it is more transmissible.

But it also has a change in the genome mutation, which we refer to as E 44 k, which is associated with reduced immunity.

So our immunity is reduced against that virus, and so that's one that does concern me.

In particular, with 100 and 20 million cases of Covid 19 around the world, it's getting hard to keep track of all the alphabet super variants peacocks teams are now thinking in terms of constellations of mutations.