By Chathushka Perera
London, UK (CWBN)_ Owing to “considerable new pressures” the UK recorded over 39,000 new Covid-19 cases and 574 fatalities in time for Christmas Eve, however, PM Boris Johnson maintained that the country will not be going into a lockdown, placing his trust in the tier system, community testing and the vaccination campaign.
In a study carried out by the Centre of Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, projections indicated a new wave of infections, complementing the recent increase of new infections, particularly in regard to the new Covid variant referred to as “VOC-202012/01”.
However the study claimed that that the variant would be about 56 percent more infectious compared to the original strain of the virus dealt with earlier this year. The news comes perhaps as a short respite following the government’s claims of the virus being about 70 percent more infectious.
While, the World Health Organisation (WHO) continues to maintain a range between 40 to 70 percent, it has confirmed that the strain has already been identified in several other countries across the world, including Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Denmark, Iceland and Australia.
South Africa also reported a variant of the virus a few days ago, referred to as “501.V2”.
During a press conference held on the 23rd of December, British Health Secretary, Matt Hancock claimed that two individuals returning from South Africa had tested positive for the 501.V2 variant.
Hancock stated that “The South African variant ‘501.V2’ is characterised by N501Y, E484K and K417N mutations in the S protein – so it shares the N501Y mutation with the UK variant, but the other two mutations are not found in the UK variant. Similarly, the South African variant does not contain the 69-70del mutation that is found in the UK variant.”
Hence the infectiousness and the severity of disease posed by each strain remains uncertain at this time.
