It is growing faster than the now-dominant strain did in the summer, they said
And it s spreading faster than any other strain in the UK at the moment
Variant likely emerged in England because little trace anywhere else in world
The new strain of coronavirus revealed by Matt Hancock yesterday has spread to Scotland and Wales after emerging in South East England, scientists say.
Members of the UK s Covid-19 Genomics UK Consortium (COG-UK) warned today that it appears to be spreading faster than the dominant strain, which was imported by holidaymakers from Spain in the summer and now accounts for the majority of infections.
Matt Hancock was today accused of scaring the public with his dramatic announcement that a mutated strain of coronavirus was spreading through London and the South East.
The Health Secretary yesterday wheeled out the bombshell claim as he laid plans to put 11million more people across the capital, Essex and Hertfordshire into Tier Three from midnight tonight, warning that the mutated strain could be spreading faster than older versions of the virus.
But experts hit back at his claim, saying he used overblown rhetoric to frighten people and revealing that the development was ordinary, with this strain unlikely to affect how vaccines work or make people any more ill – and it might even be less deadly.
Government sources say up to three households can still mix over Christmas, despite spike in Covid-19 cases
But people will be warned to think twice before meeting elderly or vulnerable family members for Christmas
Families will also be warned to stay local amid fears of traffic chaos on roads and trains packed with people
It comes as Nicola Sturgeon considers different rules for Scotland at Christmas, putting UK-wide rules at risk
BBC News
By Pria Rai
image captionJames helps people at a testing site
Whether it s to help the fight against coronavirus or just to get a bit of extra cash, more than 50,000 people work for NHS Test and Trace
.
The system tests people for Covid-19 and traces their contacts following a positive result.
One of the workers is James, a 21-year-old geography student based at a testing site near his university in Dundee. The classes I have are online so I ve got quite a bit of free time, he says.
James wasn t able to have his usual summer job working in a kitchen because of Covid.