- Boris Johnson says there is some evidence that the coronavirus variant in the UK may be more deadly.
- The UK’s leading scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, said the data shows that the country may have a 30% higher death rate among some age groups.
- However, Vallance stressed that the evidence remains “uncertain”.
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There is some evidence that the new coronavirus variant first identified in the UK could be up to 30% more deadly than previous variants, the UK government said.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said at a press conference on Downing Street on Friday that “it now appears that there is some evidence that the new variant may be associated with a higher degree of mortality”.
The identification of the new variant, which the scientists found to have a faster transmission rate than other variants, coincided with an increase in deaths in the United Kingdom.
There were 1,401 deaths recorded from people who tested positive for coronavirus on Friday in the UK.
The UK government’s leading scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, emphasized that while he was “confident” that the new variant was more communicable, the evidence “was not yet strong” and “uncertain” that it was more deadly.
However, he said the first signs that the new variant could be up to 30% more lethal.
See Boris Johnson on the coronavirus variant in the UK
—Sky News (@SkyNews) January 22, 2021
Vallance said that while an average of 10 out of 1,000 elderly people died from the old variant in the UK, that number appears to have increased to 13 out of 1,000 people with the new variant.
This was reiterated by another UK government scientific adviser, Professor Neil Ferguson, who told ITV on Friday that: “Four groups – Imperial, LSHTM, PHE and Exeter – have examined the relationship between people who test positive for the variant versus old strains and the risk of death.
“This suggests a 1.3-fold increase in the risk of death. Therefore, for people aged 60, 13 in 1000 can die, compared with 10 in 1000 for old strains.”
However, Ferguson emphasized that there are currently only limited data available on mortality rates for each variant.
“The big caveat is that we only know which strain people were infected with in about 8% of deaths,” Ferguson told ITV.
Vallance said at the news conference that there is no evidence that the UK variant is more resistant to existing vaccines. However, he said he was more concerned with the susceptibility of the South African and Brazilian variants to vaccines.