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British Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced that a new “highly concerning” variant of the coronavirus has been discovered in two individuals returning from South Africa.
“It is yet more transmissible and it appeared to have mutated further than the new variant that has been discovered here,” Hancock said in Wednesday’s Downing Street news conference.
The government is also asking anybody that has been to South Africa in the past two weeks and their close contacts to quarantine immediately. “These measures are temporary, while we investigate this further new strain, which is currently being analyzed,” he added.
Public Health England Managing Director Susan Hopkins, who was also present at Wednesday’s news conference, said there was no evidence to suggest vaccines would not work against the new variant.
The new, more infectious variant of the coronavirus is not to be confused with the one discovered last Friday, which led to travel restrictions being implemented by over 40 countries and deadlock traffic jams at the Dover-Calais crossing.
Regarding the variant that was announced last week, BioNTech CEO Uğur Şahin said he was “confident” the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine will work against the strain, because 99 percent of the virus’ spike protein is the same.
The U.K. government also escalated more areas of the country into higher tiers to stop rising infection rates, where it was announced Wednesday that the R-value is between 1.1 and 1.3.
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