(Bloomberg) – The new coronavirus variant that emerged in the UK is more transmissible and appears to affect a greater proportion of people under the age of 20, according to a report by Imperial College London and other scientific groups.
© 2020 Anadolu Agency
LONDON, ENGLAND – OCTOBER 29: A woman undergoes a plaque at University College Hospital in central London on October 29, 2020. Has the coronavirus pandemic reached a “critical stage”? in England, with 96,000 new infections in a single day and infections doubling every nine days, according to Imperial College London (ICL) on Thursday. Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced that another 16 areas in England will move to Tier 2 restrictions, the second highest level, starting on Saturday. (Photo by Kate Green / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
The worrying mutation has “a substantial transmission advantage” and is linked to “epidemic growth in almost all areas,” the scientists wrote. This can increase the virus’s reproduction rate, which indicates how many people a patient infects by as much as 0.7, the researchers found.
“This will make control more difficult and further accentuate the urgency to implant vaccination as quickly as possible,” said Neil Ferguson, a professor at Imperial who worked on modeling the outbreak.
Measures of social detachment that worked against previous strains of the virus were insufficient to control the spread of the new variant, the study found. The government had previously said that the new strain was up to 70% more transmissible than other versions, without providing documentation.
Video: The first cases of a new Covid strain have been identified in the USA – here’s what is known so far (CNBC)
Click to expand
NEXT
The researchers used statistical tools to assess the link between transmission and frequency of the new variant in the United Kingdom. The data informed the government’s pandemic planning in recent weeks, said Ferguson.
It is possible that the new variant appears to infect young people more because the research was carried out at a time when there were blockades, but schools remained open, the scientists said.
For more articles like this, visit us at bloomberg.com
© 2020 Bloomberg LP
Keep reading