While the flu mutates into a new strain every year, why is Covid mutating rapidly mutating into new variants literally every week?

mutations producing variants happens every few weeks, it is only when mutations are significant enough that they would become a new strain.. the influenzae virus (causing the flu) is a different species from the coronavirus; it would be like comparing a truck with a train.. they look similar but they are not the same thing..

it is true that new variants are developing every week, but they are yet significant enough to bring new medical threats in terms of management or immunization - the few exceptions of course are the 3 main variants that were significantly different from the original "the wild strain" of COVID-19 virus that are now labelled as new strains.. these 3 variants: The UK, South Africa and Brazil strains are significantly a faster spreader and a bit less deadly than the wild strain of the COVID-19 coronavirus, but they are all COVID-19 coronavirus (better known as SARS-CoV-2), and because of the similarities, the vaccines used for the wild strain of COVID-19 are the same vaccines to be used against those 3 strains of COVID-19..

in 2020, people who have survived COVID-19 and had recovered from the illness.. often do not get re-infected with the same virus.. the cases of re-infection with COVID-19 were rare and often confused with the first infection.. `

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UNFORTUNATELY, in 2021, people who got COVID-19 last year, can get re-infected with COVID-19 if they came in contact with those new variants (this is based on a study in South Africa and an early observation in the UK); and the numbers of cases of re-infections with COVID-19 are now in the hundreds and rising in 2021 compared to most of 2020.. in fact, the UK variant (also known as the Kent variant if you live in the UK), has become the dominant variant in the US which is troublesome because the risk of re-infection had doubled several folds in the US..`

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the current vaccines against COVID-19 provide significant immunity against the illness (it is not an absolute immunity but still significant).. the fear is that the world-wide immunization programs would not be quick enough to make everyone immune before new strains of the virus that do resist the vaccines.. `

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the longer people doubting, delaying and hesitating from taking the vaccine, the more chance of new variants and strains appear and the longer this pandemic would last.. so.. if you want to make the pandemic to end faster, please get vaccinated as soon as possible and follow ALL the pandemic rules (such as mask wearing in public, social distancing, hand washing and such) even after you have been vaccinated until the pandemic is over and ONLY when the pandemic is over.. or when the daily new cases of COVID-19 drops into single digits in your country.. and.. and all the best