Source::Xinhuanet
XINHUA/RSS
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Thursday that Britain is "anxious" about the coronavirus variant first detected in India and his government is "ruling nothing out" to tackle its spread in the country.
"We want to make sure that we take all the prudential, all the cautious steps now that we could take," he told Sky News. "So there are meetings going on today (Thursday) to consider exactly what we need to do," he said. Johnson's remarks came in the wake of spikes of new variants in some areas in Britain. Scientists have raised concerns that the current vaccines may be less effective against the new variants.
The consortium of scientists studying new variants in the country, COG-UK, has identified a total of 1,723 cases of the Indian variant known as B1617.2. Although some of these will be duplicates, it is more than triple Public Health England's confirmed figure last week of 520, according to Sky News.
However, Johnson said the easing of lockdown will go ahead as planned for now. Johnson said he "can see nothing that dissuades me from thinking we'll be able to go ahead on Monday and indeed on June 21 everywhere" in terms of easing coronavirus restrictions in England. "I think we have to wait a little bit longer to see how the data is looking but I am cautiously optimistic about that and provided this Indian variant doesn't take off in the way some people fear, I think certainly things could get back much, much closer to normality," he said.
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