British Health Minister Matt Hancock announced on Wednesday that A second variant of coronavirus was detected “even more contagious” than the reported strain last week.
This version of SARS-CoV-2, related to people who have traveled to the UK from South Africa, it is “very worrying” and appears to contain several mutations than the one that began to spread rapidly in the south of England.
With the emergence of this strain, the British government will impose “immediate” restrictions on travel to South Africa and strict quarantine on people who have returned from the country in the last two weeks.
The United Kingdom has so far identified two cases of the new strain on its territory, both in people close to people who had traveled in recent weeks.
“We are incredibly grateful to the South African Government for their scientific rigor and for the openness and transparency with which they acted when the new version was discovered here,” Hancock told a news conference.
The minister announced at the same time that more areas in England will enter the maximum level of pandemic restrictions in the coming days, given the expansion in the last days of the strain reported last week, it appears to be spreading faster than previously known versions of the virus.
Following the detection of this variant, more than fifty countries have limited travel from the United Kingdom.
According to the latest official figures, infections in the UK have risen by 61.2% in the last seven days, compared to the previous seven.
In England, there are already 17,709 hospitalized with covid, getting closer to the 18,974 hospitalized who were reached at the peak of the first wave of the pandemic, on April 12.
“This Christmas and the beginning of 2021 will be a difficult period. The new variant makes everything much more difficult, because it spreads much faster. But we must not give up, we know we can control this virus “, said the Minister of Health.
Hancock also reported that the UK regulator has already received the information needed to review the approval of the vaccine developed by Oxford University and the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca.
“The vaccine is our way out of all this. Despite how harsh Christmas and winter will be, we know that the transformative power of science helps us find a way,” he argued.