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“Even if the virus spreads a little more efficiently, it can be stopped,” WHO director of medical emergencies Michael Ryan told a news conference Monday.
The situation “is not out of control.” But Ryan called for steps to be stepped up to contain the new mutation. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said over the weekend that the mutation that occurred in south-east England was “up to 70 percent more contagious” than the original variant of the corona virus. UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the new strain of the virus was “out of control”.
According to British researchers, the new variant of the virus may also be more contagious to children than the previous ones. “There is some evidence that it has a higher propensity to infect children,” said Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London, a member of the Nervtag think tank that the government bert. The exact mechanism is not yet clear. “But we can see it from the data.” According to her colleague Wendy Barclay, some mutations affect the way the virus enters a cell. This could mean that “children can be as susceptible to this virus as adults.”
However, the Berlin Charite’s chief virologist Christian Drosten pointed out on Monday in Deutschlandfunk that Johnson’s statement was only an estimate. It is not yet clear whether the new variant is actually more transferable. The fear of expanding the new Corona variant caused travel chaos around the world and especially in Europe. Many countries, including Austria, cut their air connections with Great Britain.
