[ad_1]
The European Union (EU) health agency ECDC said on Tuesday the risk was “high” that newly discovered virus variants that cause COVID-19 could further affect medical care and cause more deaths due to to “greater transmissibility”.
The Stockholm-based European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said in a report that “although there is no information that infections with these strains are more serious,” the fact that they spread more easily means that the impact on “hospitalizations and deaths are assessed as high.”
Like previously circulating virus variants, this was particularly true for “those in older age groups or with comorbidities,” the agency added.
The report specifically addressed the two new variants discovered in the United Kingdom (UK) and South Africa, both of which show signs of “increased transmissibility”.
More than 3,000 cases of the UK variant have already been reported in the UK and in dozens of countries in Europe and around the world, according to the ECDC.
In South Africa, more than 300 cases of another variant have been recorded and three cases of the same variant have been confirmed in Europe, two in the UK and one in Finland, but all three have been linked to people returning from South Africa.
The health agency recommended that countries continue to advise citizens “on the need for non-pharmaceutical interventions according to their local epidemiological situation” with a particular focus on “non-essential travel and social activities.”
ECDC also recommended a number of options to “delay the introduction and further spread of a new variant of concern,” including targeted sequencing of community cases to “detect early and monitor the incidence of the variant.”
In addition, he recommended greater “monitoring and testing” of people linked to areas with a higher number of the variant and also reminded people who come from those areas of the need to “comply with quarantine” and be tested. – AFP
[ad_2]
