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The new strain of the novel coronavirus has raised concerns due to its high transmission capacity.
And a new report has claimed that the mutation is targeting the young, as most cases have been reported in people under the age of 20.
The Imperial College London report also suggests that measures such as social distancing that have been taken to curb the spread of Covid-19 do not work against the new variant.
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Previously, the deadly virus was believed to strike young people and children, but now it appears that young people are vulnerable and can spread it to millions more.
In the UK, recent estimates show that the variant has infected secondary children the most.
The deadly strain is the most prevalent among young people in South Africa, and a two-year-old child and a six-year-old child have been infected in India.
However, Britain’s leading medical expert Neil Ferguson says the symptoms in young people will be the same as those seen in adults.
“From the earlier strains of this virus, we know that children were less likely to be infected and certainly much less likely to have symptoms than adults, which is unusual for a respiratory virus in the sense that most respiratory viruses are transmit more efficiently in children.One possibility is that this virus has changed in some way, which doesn’t particularly target children, it just makes children look more like adults, a bit, even in terms of symptoms or viral replication or transmission or both, “Ferguson said.
However, the findings are still in their infancy and time will tell if the new strain will turn into a new headache in 2021 or not.
