Reports on variants of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 have swept the news over the past few months, but what exactly is a virus variant?

Namandjé Bumpus, Ph.D., director of the Department of Pharmacology and Molecular Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, breaks down what is changing in the variants and what we can do to stop them.

“Variants of viruses are expected. Every virus changes and evolves,” says Bumpus. “However, the ones that are really of interest are the ones that are changing the parts of the virus that are targeted by the vaccines.”

Bumpus is available for interviews on this topic.