New Strain Of COVID-19 In UK Is 56% More Infectious; Vaccine The Best Fighting Chance: Study

The UK observed a record number of COVID-19 cases and deaths this week in the entirety of the pandemic due to a new strain of Coronavirus that is being touted as more infectious than the existing one. A new study now estimates just how much more contagious this new strain is.

Conducted by the London School of Hygiene And Tropical Medicine, the new study concurs that the new coronavirus mutation in the U.K. is about 56% more contagious than the one that infected people across the world through the year. The figure is less than the one floated by the UK government earlier while reimposing lockdowns in the country. It is, however, still alarming, warn researchers.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson, while reinstating coronavirus restrictions in London and much of south England last week, said that the new Covid-19 strain may be as much as 70% more infectious than the previous strain. Though the study says that it is not as bad, it does warn that the level of transmissibility is still enough to dramatically worsen the UK¡¯s coronavirus outbreak.

(Representative Image: Reuters)

As quoted in a report by Forbes, scientists believe that the mutation will ¡°likely cause far more hospitalisations and deaths next year¡± than the country saw in 2020.

On the plus side, there was no evidence that suggested that the new strain of Coronavirus is more dangerous or deadly. It is even not found to be resistant to coronavirus vaccines, meaning the vaccines could work just as effectively against it as the regular strain.

Scientists behind the study hence propose that the best strategy to fight the strain is to ¡°greatly accelerate vaccine roll-out¡± in the country.

Such mutations of COVID-19 are emerging from different parts of the world as following the two new strains in the UK, a third one was found to be prevalent in Nigeria. Vaccines against the novel disease, however, are found to be effective against all of these strains as of now.