Covid: WHO in ‘close contact’ with UK over new virus variant

BBC – The World Health Organization (WHO) has said it is in “close contact” with UK officials over the emergence of a new variant of coronavirus.

The new variant is spreading more rapidly than the original version, but it is not believed to be more deadly.

Along with the UK, the same mutation of the Covid-19 virus has also been detected in the Netherlands, Denmark and Australia, the WHO told the BBC.

There is no evidence to suggest the new variant reacts differently to vaccines.

In the UK, large parts of south-east England, including London, are now under a new, stricter level of restrictions in a bid to curb the rapidly spreading virus.

On Sunday, the Netherlands introduced a ban on passenger flights from the UK until 1 January because of the new variant.

The move comes after tests carried out on samples taken in the Netherlands earlier this month revealed the same new variant of coronavirus as that reported in the UK.

Pending “greater clarity” on the situation in the UK, the Dutch government said that further “risk of the new virus strain being introduced to the Netherlands should be minimised as much as possible”.

The Dutch government also said it would work with other European Union member states in the coming days to “explore the scope for further limiting the risk of the new strain of the virus being brought over from the UK”.

Speaking to the BBC’s Andrew Marr programme, WHO epidemiologist Maria van Kerkhove said that specialists had been “following mutations across the world since the beginning of the pandemic”.

What do we know about the new variant?

The WHO said that it was in contact with UK officials over the new variant.

It said the UK was sharing information from ongoing studies into the mutation, and that the WHO would update member states and the public “as we learn more about the characteristics of this virus variant [and] any implications”.

Although there is “considerable uncertainty”, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the new variant may be up to 70% more transmissible than the old one.

But officials say there is no current evidence to suggest the new variant causes a higher mortality rate or that it is affected any differently by vaccines and treatments.

“I think this is a situation which is going to make things a lot worse, but there are some really optimistic things if you look once we get the vaccine out, assuming the vaccine works against this, which at the moment is the working assumption,” said England’s chief medical officer, Prof Chris Whitty.

Mutations of the virus are frequently identified, Dr Van Kerkhove said, adding that it was important to understand “what these variants do and how they behave”.