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New Zealand will see the UK’s new Covid-19 variant here in the coming weeks, a leading epidemiologist warns.
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But, the new variant of Covid-19 found in the UK is potentially only a problem for New Zealand if the virus is imported and an outbreak starts here, said Professor Michael Baker.
Top health officials in the UK say there was no evidence that the new variant was more deadly or reacted differently to vaccines, but it was proving to be up to 70 percent more transmissible, the BBC reports.
London and other parts of south-east England are now blockaded.
The mutation has also been detected in the Netherlands, Denmark and Australia.
“It’s probably not that surprising that a strain like this arises because there is this evolutionary pressure on the virus, it always has a lot of variants floating around and if one is more infectious than others, it will create more virus in the next generation and so on, so that the strain become more dominant. “
Baker said there were positive cases in the UK in last week’s cases reported here.
“Basically every time an infected person enters an MIQ facility in New Zealand, the risk of outbreaks increases because errors occur and it is a difficult virus to control.”
He said a simple measure is to add an extra step, an additional period of MIQ stay in the UK, and have a negative test result before traveling.
“We will bring this virus to New Zealand now or in the next few weeks because it is becoming the dominant virus there.”
Meanwhile, in Australia, new Covid-19 restrictions were implemented in Greater Sydney after an outbreak on the northern beaches.
The New Zealand government says it is closely monitoring the new Covid-19 cluster in Sydney, but it is too early to say whether it will affect a trans-Tasman bubble.
“What you are seeing is very similar to what we saw in our August outbreak in Auckland … and this is a scenario that you don’t want to see, where cases appear in the community with no link to the border. That always tells you that there will be other invisible cases out there … “
Baker says New Zealand and Australia are dealing with the virus in similar ways, working on an elimination strategy.
“I don’t think this episode really changes the possibility of having a bond and eventually traveling without quarantine with Australia, we just have to be very good at handling these things when they happen.”
It will be months before there is sufficient vaccine coverage in Australia and New Zealand and we can limit transmission, he said.
