The new strain of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which arose from a mutation and was found in the UK, is more infectious, but does not generally change the level of danger of the disease. So he was assessed by the special envoy of the World Health Organization (WHO) for the global fight against COVID-19, David Nabarro, reports Sky News.
“He is more infectious, but, apparently, not more dangerous,” the publication quotes him as saying. Nabarro stressed that people should remain careful, but no radical changes in priorities and ways of dealing with the epidemic due to the new strain are foreseen.
A day earlier, the WHO announced a similar preliminary assessment: existing data show that the mutation is unlikely to make the virus more dangerous than it was before.
Earlier, UK Health Minister Matthew Hancock said that a new strain of SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus had been discovered in the country, which spreads faster than the original form. There is no evidence that it is more lethal than known strains of SARS-CoV-2 and is resistant to vaccines, he said. At the same time, it is more easily transmitted from person to person and therefore more contagious.
According to the Johns Hopkins Institute on December 15, there are more than 72.9 million people infected with coronavirus in the world, of which more than 1.62 million have died, another 41.3 million have recovered. Most of the infected are registered in the USA, India, Brazil, Russia and France.
