Antiviral drug makes covid evolve faster

[shpalman]

molnupiravir has resulted in viable SARS-CoV-2 viruses with significant numbers of mutations, in some cases with onwards transmission of mutated viruses

[science_fox]

Well yes that's what drugs do. If you kill only a subset of the population the rest survive to become resistant - cf Domestos adverts kills 99.99% of bacteria and viruses, leaves millions of cells still replicating. And especially so for antibiotics (and even more especially those that are based from bacteria in the first place which many are*)



*bacteria routinely wage antibacterial war against each other trying to occupy fertile niches. It's relatively easy to screen wide ranges of bacteria from exotic locations for 'novel' anti-bacterials. But anything that one bacteria has secreted has almost certainly been seen by the other species before, and are 'remembered' somewhere in the genetic code, and then resistance quickly evolved. I attended a great talk from a US prof who took bacterial samples from pristine environments (she was a caver and got into aquafers that were genuinely untouched by humans). These bacterial still very very quickly evolved resistance to common antibiotics.

[shpalman]

But if you actually read the link and the words in it, you'll see that the drug works by making the virus mutate. Most mutations of course would be detrimental but do it enough and you'll get a few which convey advantages.