British Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced on Wednesday that another variant of the new coronavirus had been detected in two people who were contacts of cases from recent trips to South Africa.
Hancock announced the discovery on Wednesday, while listing several areas in England that would fall under Level 4 restrictions.
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“Of course, the fight against the virus is a global effort and we are constantly vigilant and look around the world as part of our surveillance,” he said at a news conference. “And because of the impressive genomic capacity of South Africans, we have detected two cases of another new variant of coronavirus here in the UK. Both are contacts of cases that have traveled from South Africa in the last week. “
British Health Secretary Matt Hancock made the announcement in a briefing on Wednesday.
(AP)
Hancock said the new variant is “extremely worrying” because “it is even more transmissible and seems to have moved more than the new variant discovered in the UK”.
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As a result, while researchers continue to study the potential implications of the variant, the UK has ordered new cases and close contacts of cases detected in the quarantined UK and imposed immediate restrictions on travel in South Africa.
“Anyone in the UK who has been in South Africa in the last two weeks and anyone who is in close contact with someone who has been in South Africa in the last two weeks should be quarantined immediately,” he said. to restrict any contact “with any person, of any kind”.
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“We all know that 2020 was a difficult year and it ends in this festive period, which will be very different – after all efforts to control this virus and in many parts of the country this virus is under control – just as we have a multilevel system that was able to control this virus, we discovered a new, more contagious variant of the virus that is spreading at a dangerous rate, “he said.
Pfizer has expressed confidence in its vaccine’s ability to protect against the first variant found in the UK, citing mRNA “flexibility”. It was not immediately clear how the second variant differs from the first and whether it would also be susceptible to the vaccine.