The new coronavirus strain known as B117 that emerged in the UK has terrified a lot of people with its ability to make the virus spread more rapidly. But PM Boris Johnson suspects that the new strain could be making COVID-19 more lethal than before, according to RT.com.
The UK is the second most affected European country by the ongoing pandemic, having tens of thousands of infections and easily over 1,000 deaths each day. By this rhythm, UK will soon surpass Russia in the ranking of the most affected countries by COVID-19.
There is evidence that COVID-19 has become more lethal
PM Boris Johnson manifested his worrying by declaring:
We’ve been informed today that in addition to spreading more quickly, it also now appears that there is some evidence that the new variant – the variant that was first discovered in London and the south east (of England) – may be associated with a higher degree of mortality.
Also, we shouldn’t expect the number of deaths caused by the coronavirus to decrease too soon in the UK. The PM says that the spread of the new strain during the holidays has caused a big surge of infections.
On the other hand, the government’s Chief Scientific Advisor Patrick Vallance says that there is no increase in mortality, according to hospital data. But the big problem is in the case of those who got tested positive for COVID-19, Vallance adding that they were at higher risk of dying. Vallance also declared:
If you took somebody in their 60s, the average risk is that for 1,000 people who got infected, roughly 10 would be expected to unfortunately die with the virus,
With the new variant for 1,000 people infected, roughly 13 or 14 people might be expected to die, that’s the sort of change for that sort of age group.
The UK has a total of over 3.5 million infections and more than 95,000 deaths caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
