New Delhi, March 5 (IANS): Chinese researchers have discovered that there are two strains of new coronavirus at play globally -- one is more severe and the other a less aggressive one.

Scientists with Peking University's School of Life Sciences and the Institut Pasteur of Shanghai found that one strain - type "L" of the virus was more aggressive and accounted for about 70 per cent of the strains analysed.

The second - type "S" - was less aggressive and accounted for about 30 per cent of analysed strains, reports Fox News.

Type 'L' was prevalent during the "early stages of the outbreak in Wuhan" and this strain decreased "after early January 2020".

However, the S type, "might have increased in relative frequency due to relatively weaker selective pressure", they noted.

Although the L type is more prevalent than the S type, the S type was found to be the ancestral version, the authors of the study noted.

Worldwide, over 3,000 people have died and nearly 1 lakh infected, and most of those cases are in China. The new virus has now reached at least 80 countries.

"Human intervention may have placed more severe selective pressure on the L type, which might be more aggressive and spread more quickly," said the researchers.

These findings strongly support an urgent need for further immediate, comprehensive studies that combine genomic data, they suggested.