British health officials have discovered a new strain of the coronavirus variant that appears to render vaccines less effective.
In reaction to the startling discovery, workers are preparing to launch a door-to-door testing campaign in an effort to nip the spread of the more contagious virus in the bud, says British Health Secretary Matt Hancock. “Our mission must be to stop its spread altogether and break those chains of transmission,” he told the British Parliament on Tuesday.
#BREAKING The contagious COVID-19 strain has "spontaneously" mutated again and may now be more resistant to antibodies — scientists say it has effectively "developed a superpower".
https://t.co/RE4w6uEtub pic.twitter.com/aBOLgasVDr
— nzherald (@nzherald) February 2, 2021
Sharon Peacock, director of COVID-19 Genomics U.K., says the evolution of the virus was inevitable. “Existing variants of concern will increasingly acquire new mutations,” she says. “This will lead to a constellation around the original variant.”
Should all traffic in and out of the U.K. be immediately stopped and enforced?
