That was Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Dr. Hazel laws.
On December 22nd 2020, the UK has found a new Covid-19 variant of the SARS Covid-2 virus, sparking travel bans to the UK from countries around the world.
According to the BBC, the variant can be found across the UK, except Northern Ireland, but it is heavily concentrated in London, the South East and eastern England.
The reasons countries are on high alert, are due to scientific findings that: it is rapidly replacing other versions of the virus, it has mutations that affect part of the virus likely to be important and some of those mutations have shown to increase the virus’ ability to infect cells.
All of these findings together, indicate that the new variant can possibly spread more easily. Dr. Laws explains further whether the variant is more or less deadly than the former:
