Coronavirus: New COVID-19 variant identified in the UK

The United Kingdom has identified a new variant of the novel coronavirus - but England's Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty says there's no evidence it causes worse or different symptoms from the widely-known variant of COVID-19.

Whitty told media on Monday the reason officials were taking the new variant particularly seriously was it has quite a few more mutations than some of the other variants of the COVID-19 virus.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the government must take swift action after seeing “very sharp, exponential rises” in Greater London and nearby Kent and Essex. He said in some areas cases are doubling every seven days.

The surge of COVID-19 cases in southern England may be associated with a new variant of coronavirus, Hancock told lawmakers. He said officials are assessing the new strand, but stressed there was nothing to suggest it was more likely to cause serious disease, or that it wouldn’t respond to a vaccine.

The World Health Organization is also aware of this new variant that has emerged in the U.K., but there is no evidence the strain behaves differently to existing types of the virus, it said on Monday.

"We are aware of this genetic variant reported in 1,000 individuals in England," the WHO's top emergencies expert Mike Ryan told a news briefing in Geneva.

For more info, please go to https://globalnews.ca/news/7521099/coronavirus-variant-strand-uk/

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