A group of people walk down a London street where a luminous sign warns of the high risk of contagion in the city.TOLGA AKMEN / AFP
The United Kingdom announced this Wednesday that at least two cases of the new variant of the virus from South Africa have been detected in its territory.
"It is very worrying, because its transmissibility is even higher, and has mutated more rapidly, than the newly discovered strain in the UK," said UK Health Minister Matt Hancock.
The Government of Boris Johnson has ordered the cessation of flights from the African country, and keeps in isolation all the people who have had contact with the two cases detected.
Dr Susan Hopkins, the Chief Medical Officer of
Public Health England
(the managing body of public health in England), has ensured that the two new variants "have much greater transmission capacity", although he admitted that they have not yet studied in sufficient detail the original strain of South Africa.
“Both the UK and South African variants show genetic changes in the spicule (the protein that envelops the virus, named for its spiky profile, which is key to adherence to the human cell) that suggest they are more infectious.
But the standard norms to avoid contagion (cleaning of hands, use of a mask and social distance) should be enough to stop the transmission ”, has explained Lawrence Young, professor of Molecular Oncology at the Medical School of Warwick, to the scientific information website SMC.
The coronavirus, scientists explain, is constantly mutating.
The United Kingdom is the country with the greatest capacity to carry out genome sequences, and that would be the reason why they detect more quickly new variants that could already be in other countries without having been detected yet.
The British Government has announced an increase in social restrictions in new areas of the country from December 26.
Six million people will join the other eighteen who are already under Level 4, of maximum alert.
Along with the total closure of shops and hotels, meetings are limited to two people outdoors.
In the last 24 hours a new record number of infected has been registered in the United Kingdom.
39,237 people in a single day, more than double the daily average of 18,000 registered the previous week.
The total number of deaths from covid-19 in this country is already 69,051.
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