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LONDON – The UK has given up on plans to ease traffic restrictions over Christmas in the face of evidence suggesting that a variant of the new coronavirus in circulation may be up to 70% more transmissible. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced on Saturday that London and south-east England will move from level 3 of restrictions against Covid-19 to level 4, the highest. The change will take effect from Sunday through December 30. With the new measures, residents should stay home, with limited exceptions. Shops, gyms and leisure and personal care facilities will be closed. People should work from home if they can. Also, residents of Level 4 regions should not mix with anyone outside their home during Christmas.
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With the measure, the United Kingdom joins the list of European countries that have decreed, in recent days, more rigid blocks to stop the spread of Covid-19 before the holidays. Italy, Switzerland, Germany, France, Austria and Sweden have also tightened isolation measures.
A new variant of the coronavirus that has been discovered in the south of the United Kingdom is spreading more rapidly, the head of the British Medical Authority, Chris Whitty, said on Saturday. He said the UK reported its discovery to the World Health Organization (WHO).
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Health Minister Matt Hancock announced on Monday that scientists had identified a “new variant” in southern England that could be spreading faster.
The UK saw an increase in cases and hospitalizations this month. Because of this, the British government decided to enact a new lockdown in London and the south-east of England starting Sunday, just before Christmas gatherings, to try to contain the rise in infections attributed to the new strain of coronavirus.
“It appears that this spread is driven by a new variant of the virus, (which is transmitted) much more easily,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson told a news conference. “Nothing indicates that it is more deadly or that it causes a more serious form of the disease or that it reduces the effectiveness of vaccines,” he added.
The inhabitants of the capital and the south-east of England, already subject to significant restrictions, will be subject to a new alert level, the fourth and maximum. They will have to stay home and activities that are considered “not essential” will not be allowed. Last minute Christmas purchases must be made no later than this Saturday.
The pubs, restaurants and museums in these two areas have been closed since last weekend.
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On Friday, the government registered 28,507 new cases in the UK and this week cases were up 40.9% from the previous week. More than 1,980,000 people tested positive in the UK.
Whitty said members of an expert group told him and the government that they fear “the new variety could spread faster.”
He added that there is no evidence that the new strain causes more deaths or affects the effectiveness of vaccines.
New variant has ‘key’ mutation, scientists say
The new variant, which British scientists dubbed “VUI – 202012/01,” includes a genetic mutation in protein S that, in theory, could make Covid-19 more easily spread between people.
Mutations, or genetic changes, occur naturally in all viruses, especially RNA viruses like Sars-CoV-2, as they replicate and circulate in human populations.
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In the case of the new coronavirus, these mutations are accumulating at a rate of one or two per month globally, according to genetics experts at COG-UK.
“As a result of this ongoing process, many thousands of mutations have already emerged in the SARS-CoV-2 genome since the virus emerged in 2019,” they explained.
Most of the mutations observed so far have had no apparent effect on the virus, and only a minority are likely to alter the pathogen significantly, for example, making it more capable of infecting people, more likely, or less likely to cause serious diseases. sensitive to natural or vaccine-induced immune defenses.
