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The new variant of the coronavirus is believed to spread much faster than previous strains, forcing large swaths of south-east England into a Level 4 lockdown less than a week before Christmas.
But the rest of the country has been warned by similar strong restrictions, and data shows that the new variant, named by Public Health England as VUI-202012/01, has already been found in other parts of the UK.
While the data provided by COVID-19 The Genomics UK Consortium (COG-UK) suggests that it has been found most commonly in London, Kent, and parts of eastern England, the map below shows that it has traveled further afield.
Samples of the new variant have been found in other parts of England, South Wales and in the Glasgow area.
The Welsh Minister of Health has said the new strain is “seeded” to the right across the country, and Nicola Sturgeon has admitted that tougher measures may be necessary in Scotland to contain the mutation there.
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Level 4 rules could be tightened in Scotland
Jeffrey Barrett, COVID-19 Lead Statistical Geneticist at COG-UK, said in a Science Media Center briefing on Tuesday: “These are relatively small numbers, but I think it is important to note that it is certainly not the case completely geographically restricted. to what is the current Level 4 area. “
Data on the new variant has been collected by COG-UK from 16 sequencing centers across the UK, in conjunction with centralized data processing and research.
The samples come from the Pillar 1 tests, mainly from hospitals, and the Pillar 2 tests, processed by Lighthouse laboratories.
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New strain of COVID ‘seeded’ in Wales
The researchers emphasized that the genome data does not represent all cases of the new variant, only those that have been processed and sequenced.
There is also a delay in the data due to the time required to sequence the samples.
Cumbria’s director of public health, Colin Cox, said rates in Eden district had risen to 345 cases per 100,000 residents, the highest seen in the county to date.
“Only a small number of cases have been positively identified in Cumbria, but what is happening in Eden, which throughout the pandemic has had low levels of infection and now has the highest we have seen, points to something different,” he said . said.
Lancashire’s director of public health, Sakthi Karunanithi, said there was a “high probability” that the new variant was in the county.
And Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham said that while there was no evidence yet that the strain made it to the area, public health directors “want to emphasize that it’s safe for people to assume it’s already here or that is about to come”. .
Cases of the new variant have been confirmed in Denmark, Italy, Gibraltar, the Netherlands and Australia.
France and South Africa also believe they have cases of the mutation, but these have not been confirmed.
At a Downing Street press conference on Monday, Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s top science adviser, warned that more areas in England could soon see tougher restrictions due to the spread of the variant.
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Will schools be closed due to the COVID variant?
Although it is considered to spread faster than the original strain, the government has said that there is no evidence that the variant is more lethal or causes more serious disease.
Meanwhile, the head of BioNTech, whose company has developed a UK-approved COVID vaccine in collaboration with Pfizer, said he was confident the jab would be effective against the new variant.
