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A new variant of Covid-19 it is spreading from the UK to other countries around the world. The WHO has just raised the alarm, revealing that the new strain, which has an R0 higher than the original and therefore greater transmissibility, has already been identified as well. Denmark, Holland and Australia.
The concern is great. And not only because the increased aggressiveness of the virus can quickly lead to a greater strain on health systems. But because it is feared that the variant will reduce the efficacy of the vaccines tested so far and will be more difficult to identify from the swabs used today.
In the second case, the current dimensions of the pandemic could be underestimated, and it is no coincidence that the British Health Minister has spoken of a new variant “out of control”. It is precisely these aspects that scientists are investigating these days.
Variant of Covid, what Hope said
The Minister of Health Roberto Speranza He spoke for half an hour to talk about the “precautionary” measure to close flights with the United Kingdom.because there is a risk that the British variant Covid will reach Italy”.
“The British minister said that the transmission capacity is almost 70% higher, so we have decided to stop the flights and other countries will take similar measures in the next few hours.”Speranza explained.
Regarding vaccines, Speranza added: “From the first information it seems that they can work equally well in this variant, but more robust information is needed.”.
At this moment, therefore, the government’s (and Europe’s) vaccine plan continues at full speed. Authorization for emergency use of the candidate developed by Pfizer and the German BioNTech, in fact Ema, the European medicine agency, is waiting for him tomorrow.
Covid-19 variant, Crisanti: we don’t know if the vaccine works
The virologist is not convinced of the unaltered effectiveness of the vaccines on the new variant of the coronavirus Andrea Crisanti: “It is not known whether the immune response produced by vaccines also covers this variant.”He told Adnkronos.
The scientist said it is important “check if this variant is already in Italy“The new strain, explained Crisanti, appeared.”this summer in Spain and in fact has a higher R0 than the others”.
For Crisanti, what is happening, although it is certainly worrying, actually already happened in the recent past, when for example the Shanghai variant has supplanted the Wuhan variant.
WHO, variant of Covid less identifiable with tampons
The Covid-19 variant that spread to Great Britain according to “Preliminary information may affect the performance of some diagnostic tests“This was announced by the World Health Organization.
The WHO also specified that “There is no evidence to indicate changes in the severity of the disease, but evaluations are also underway on this.”.
