London - Sana
The British capital, London, announced today that it is facing a "major accident" because its hospitals run the risk of being unable to cope with the highly contagious strain of the Coronavirus spread across the United Kingdom.
Reuters quoted London Mayor Siddiq Khan, who is from the opposition Labor Party, as saying today that hospital beds in the capital will be filled with patients during the next few weeks because the spread of the virus has become out of control ... and we announce that the city is facing a major accident because the threat that this virus poses to our city has become a crisis. .
The term "major accident" usually refers to attacks or serious accidents, especially those likely to involve "serious harm, harm, disruption or danger to human lives, basic services, the environment or national security."
The last time a "major accident" was announced in London was due to the Grenville Tower fire in a high-rise apartment complex in 2017, which killed 72 people.
In the same context, Khan said that there are parts of London where one in 20 residents is infected with the Coronavirus, which means pressure on the ambulance service.
The British Bureau of Statistics estimates that 1.1 million people in England are infected with the virus, that is, one in every 50 until the second of this month.
The population of London, which rivals Paris for the center of the richest city in Europe, exceeds nine million.
The leading companies in the production of Corona vaccines in the world are rushing to find out whether their vaccines are effective in facing new mutations of the virus that were detected in South Africa and Britain.
According to a laboratory study conducted by the American company Pfizer that the vaccine that it developed with the company Biontech to prevent the virus appears effective in the face of a major mutation in the new rapidly spreading strains of Corona that have been detected in Britain and South Africa, while the British Transport Minister Grant Shaps said today that there are concerns that Coronavirus vaccines may not work properly against the highly contagious strain of coronavirus discovered in South Africa.
The study, conducted by Pfizer and scientists from the University of Texas Medical Branch that has not yet been reviewed, indicates that the vaccine is effective in neutralizing the virus that carries the mutation known as "N501Y" in the protein responsible for forming thorns in the virus.
In turn, Phil Dormitzer, a senior virus vaccine scientist at Pfizer, said that the mutation may be responsible for increasing the ability to spread and infection in addition to fears that it may make the virus able to escape from the mechanism of neutralization with the antibodies raised by the vaccine.