UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Friday said that the new variant of the coronavirus also known as UK strain was first confirmed in England, now spreading around the world including US is more deadly than the covid-19.
This UK strain was already declared as to be 70 per cent more infectious than covid-19. Studies have also shown that it is 30 to 70 per cent more infectious.
This indication came from Boris Johnson and his advisers on Friday at a news briefing at 10.
Patrick Vallance England’s chief scientific adviser, explained the mortality of the new variant through an example, he said in total 1,000 men between the age of 60 or more the original virus would kill around 10 in 1,000 but this new variant would kill around 13 to 14 which means 30 per cent more mortality, although the mortality rate remains low in both the viruses.
However, he did not mention any specific reason why the variant might be linked to more deaths, but this can be due to either presence of something inherent in the strain or incompetency of overwhelmed health systems.
“I want to stress that there’s a lot of uncertainty around these numbers, and we need more work to get a precise handle on it, But it obviously is a concern that this has an increase in mortality as well as an increase in transmissibility,” he further said.
The calculation that the new variant might be more deadly came from the government’s New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group, which concluded it on the basis of various studies.
The variant have already been confirmed in more than 50 countries and is in dominance in United Kingdom. But the scientists at US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say it can become predominant in US within two months.
However, Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his science adviser asserted that vaccines will be effective against both original virus and the variant. The original coronavirus is mutating like all other viruses which are coming in the form of new variant.
All the mutations are not important but some can lead to different variants which be more or less infectious than the original one.
