Prognosis
South African Covid Strain Raises Growing Alarm in the U.K.
- U.K.’s Hancock ‘incredibly worried’ about new variant
- Mutations probably won’t neutralize vaccines: U.K. adviser
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The new coronavirus strain that emerged in South Africa is even more problematic than a mutated form that prompted new lockdowns across much of the U.K., health authorities said on Monday.
“I’m incredibly worried about the South African variant,” U.K. Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on BBC radio Monday, citing a conversation over the Christmas holiday with his counterpart in South Africa. “One of the reasons they know they’ve got a problem is because, like us, they have an excellent genomic scientific capability to be able to study the details of the virus. And it is even more of a problem than the U.K. new variant.”