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The professor told the BBC that the new strain “has taken over the whole country and is very likely to take over the whole world.”
The Kent strain has already been officially discovered in more than 50 countries around the world. It was first detected in a COVID-19 patient in September 2020 and has since spread rapidly over the course of a few months across the UK. The virus spread so quickly that the UK even had to take further quarantine measures in January this year.
Professor Peacock, head of the Covid-19 Genomics UK consortium, said: “What really affected us at the moment is transmissibility.”
Professor Sh. Peacock said the British, and soon the world, faced mutations in the virus and changes in transmission. “As soon as we defeat it (the virus) or it mutates, it becomes less virulent or no longer causes disease, we can stop worrying about it. But I think looking to the future, it will take another year. In my opinion, it will take at least 10 years, ”he warned.
The researcher also said that the vaccines, although developed on the basis of older strains, should work with the new ones. Although, it may not be possible to maintain the same high efficiency in all cases.
EC leader: vaccine production must follow science
Europe needs to speed up production of COVID-19 vaccines to catch up with scientific advances and avoid emerging new strains of coronavirus, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Wednesday.
“We don’t appreciate the difficulties associated with mass production. The production of a new vaccine usually takes between five and ten years. We did it in 10 months. “It is a great scientific achievement and we should be justifiably proud of it, but in a sense science has overtaken industry,” he said in a speech to the European Parliament.
In his first public confession to Europeans, not counting several interviews with individual media, von der Leyen said that the Commission under his leadership had made mistakes when buying vaccines on behalf of all EU countries.
However, he defended the general strategy.
“It just came to our notice then. We were too optimistic about mass production, and perhaps we were too confident that what we asked for would be delivered on time,” he said.
However, allowing the richest countries in Europe to obtain vaccines and leaving others with nothing “would mean, I think, an end for our community,” added von der Leyen.
The world will face an unprecedented humanitarian crisis in 2021. As countries focus on fighting the Covid-19 pandemic, countries in major conflict and crises are forced to act on their own, and people more Earth’s vulnerable pay a high price, warns the International Rescue Committee (IRC).
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