Source::Xinhuanet
XINHUA/RSS
The India-related coronavirus variant could drive another wave in Britain, a British government advisory scientist warned Thursday. "The virus just got faster," said Andrew Hayward, a professor from the government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), indicating that Britain could be at start of third COVID-19 wave.
"That really brings it back down to this race against the vaccine and the virus," Hayward, an infectious diseases expert at University College London, told the BBC. "I think what we can see is that this strain can circulate very effectively, although it was originally imported through travel to India, it's spread fairly effectively first of all within households and now more broadly within communities, so I don't really see why it wouldn't continue to spread in other parts of the country," he said.
"Obviously we're doing everything we can to contain the spread of that, but it's likely that more generalized measures may start to be needed to control it," he added. Almost 3,000 cases of the coronavirus variant first detected in India have been reported in Britain, British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said Wednesday.
Speaking at the House of Commons, lower house of the British Parliament, Hancock said 2,967 cases of the COVID-19 variant had been recorded as of Wednesday, 28 percent up from the figure of more than 2,300 on Monday.
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