LONDON (CU)_A new study has found that the highly infectious COVID-19 variant which was first detected in the United Kingdom is between 30 to 100 per cent more deadly than other strains.
The study, which was published in the British Medical Journal on Wednesday (10 March), compared death rates among people infected with the UK variant – known as B.1.1.7 – with those infected with other strains, and found that the former had “significantly higher” mortality.
It revealed that among 54,906 COVID-19 patients infected with what is commonly known as the “UK variant”, 227 fatalities were reported, in comparison to 141 deaths registered among the same number of patients infected with other variants.
“Coupled with its ability to spread rapidly, this makes B.1.1.7 a threat that should be taken seriously,” Robert Challen, a researcher who co-led the research at Exeter University said.
The B.1.1.7 variant was first detected in the county of Kent in south-eastern England, in September last year, and has since become a dominant strain in the UK, while it was also found in patients in more than 100 countries.
According to UK scientists, this variant is about 40 to 70 per cent more transmissible than other variants, and its rapid spread fuelled a surge in infections and deaths late last year, which led to the national lockdown introduced on 4 January.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, the United Kingdom has reported more than 4.3 million COVID-19 infections and nearly 125,000 virus-induced deaths.
Meanwhile, the British government has rolled out a mass inoculation drive, in a bid to curb the crisis, and more than 22.5 million people in the country have received at least one dose of a vaccine to date.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said last month, he is confident that both Oxford/ AstraZeneca and Pfizer/ BioNtech vaccines, which are currently being used in the UK, are effective in protecting against “death and serious illness”.
