play-icon
Video report by ITV News Correspondent Helen Keenan
Boris Johnson will hold a press conference on Saturday after amid concern about the rising number of coronavirus cases in south-east England.
The prime minister is meeting with Cabinet ministers to discuss the spread of a mutant strain of Covid-19, which scientists believe is spreading more quickly than the previous form.
Joined by Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance, the prime minister is expected to outline his concern about the growing prevalance of the disease.
Following news of Saturday s press conference, chief medical officer Chris Whitty said: As announced on Monday, the UK has identified a new variant of Covid-19 through Public Health England’s genomic surveillance.
Is it getting more frequent because it’s in a part of the country in which the rate of the increase is going faster anyway and therefore inevitably it’s a higher proportion? Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty told the government press conference. Or is it that this virus itself is possible to transmit more easily? That isn’t really yet clear.
Mutations in viruses are a fact of life. They happen literally all the time. Fortunately for us SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes Covid-19) doesn t mutate very much by virus standards. Only about two or three times every month. And from genetic sequences being collected by researchers and public health labs across the world we ve now identified tens of thousands of different variants of SARS-CoV-2.
Covid: Pupils in parts of London, Kent and Essex to be mass tested itv.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from itv.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.