December 23, 2020
An expert in the United Kingdom has said that the new variant of coronavirus is likely already in most if not all European countries. Courtesy photo
LONDON An expert in the United Kingdom has said that the new variant of coronavirus is likely already in most if not all European countries.
Neil Ferguson, the Director at MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College London, said that experts picking up ten cases of the variant in a country as small as Denmark with a relatively low infection rate “would suggest . that this virus has been introduced into the great majority if not all of the European countries at the current time.
BBC News
By James Gallagher
Scientists are urgently investigating hints the new variant of coronavirus spreads more easily in children.
If proven, this could account for a significant proportion of the increase in transmission, they say.
The claim comes from members of the government s New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats advisory group (Nervtag).
On Monday, Boris Johnson said he wanted to open schools in January if we possibly can .
There are no suggestions the new form of the virus is a greater threat to children s health.
Earlier strains of coronavirus found it harder to infect children than adults.
One explanation is children have fewer of the doorways (the ACE2 receptor) the virus uses to enter our body s cells.
PARIS, FRANCE As dozens of countries blocked the flow of people and goods from the U.K. to avoid a new and more contagious strain of coronavirus, scientists raced to understand how it emerged and the scope of its threat.
Here are some of the key questions they are asking, and the answers that have emerged so far.
HOW OFTEN DO VIRUSES MUTATE? All the time, but some viruses do it more than others. A two-dose vaccine against measles, for example, can last a lifetime, where as the cocktail in flu shots changes every year to keep up with genetic shape-shifting.
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