WHO: coronavirus changes as it spreads

The novel coronavirus is changing as it spreads among humans, the World Health Organization's Representative in Russia Melita Vujnovic said.

"There are different versions of the virus in different parts of the world," she said, when asked how many versions of the coronavirus existed at the moment. 

"In theory, the coronavirus could have emerged anywhere but its versions are the result of its spread among humans," TASS cited Vujnovic as saying.

She also said that the World Health Organization was closely monitoring research activities that could help understand the nature of the virus. "The information about the virus in Russia is available to the country’s researchers," the WHO envoy noted.

"Russian research institutions have informed the WHO of efforts to create a candidate vaccine based on the knowledge about the virus’s genome, so we expect to see scientific articles on the matter from Russia," Vujnovic said.