From UK to Italy: Countries that have reported new Covid-19 strains

21-12-2020

Coronavirus is mutating and its latest strain said to transmit faster has spread fear across several countries ahead of Christmas. British prime minister Boris Johnson immediately responded to the new strain by imposing the strictest lockdown in London. The mutant virus that the UK officials say has 70 per cent transmissibility was found in southeastern England in?September and has been moving around the world, as per an official of the World Health Organization (WHO), reported AP. Several European nations and other countries have also tried to distance itself from the United Kingdom after the news of the super spreading virus strain trickled in. Many have imposed travel bans to tackle the crisis. Researchers in Sweden had found a new mutation in the virus as early as April. They observed two changes in the genetic material of the virus that seemed to make it two times more powerful in transmission, AP?cited Dr Ravi Gupta, a virologist at the University of Cambridge in England, as saying. Gupta said that around 6,000 cases of the new virus worldwide were reported, mostly in Denmark and England. Many more variations in the genome have been discovered since then, it was also reported that people in Denmark got the new strain from mink farms. News about the new strain that is driving the second wave in South?Africa was also reported on Friday. South African health officials believed that the newly found strain of coronavirus seems to spread faster but the severity of the disease due to the mutations are still unknown. Italy is another such country where the new strain of the virus discovered in the UK has been found. Italy on?Sunday reported that it has found the new strain of coronavirus in a person who has recently returned from the United Kingdom. France on Monday also reported there is a possibility that the new strain of coronavirus is also spreading in the country. �It is entirely possible that the virus is circulating in France,� French health minister Olivier Veran was quoted as saying by Reuters. However, the recent tests have not detected the mutant yet. Viruses evolve through minor changes in a letter or two in their genetic database. The new modifications can become a major strain in a region because of its evolution there or due to any event that helped it spread. The pathogens mutate to survive in order to defeat the evolving human immune system as well as the vaccines that endanger its survival. These mutations determine the severity of the disease, the communicability of the virus as well as the relation of the virus with the human cell that can lead to infection.