Vaccines effective against new virus strain – German health minister
LONDON, United Kingdom — UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock warned that the new strain of the coronavirus is “out of control” and suggested parts of England will be stuck in the new, highest tier of restrictions until a vaccine is rolled out.
With this development, the UK plunged into Christmas chaos with police blocking people from boarding packed trains, holidays abroad scrapped and travel with Europe banned after London went into an emergency lockdown.
More than 16 million Britons are now required to stay at home after a lockdown came into force Sunday in London and southeast England.
Gov’t cancels family gatherings
In a sudden turnaround, Prime Minister Boris Johnson canceled plans to allow families to see each other over the festive period as the government warned that a new strain of the coronavirus is “out of control.”
There were scenes of panic at train stations, with people defying social-distancing rules to get out of the capital before the new rules took effect on Sunday.
Johnson had originally planned to ease pandemic rules for five days during the holiday, but made an abrupt change of tack after emergency talks on the virus mutation with officials.
Vaccines effective against new virus strain
But European Union experts believe existing vaccines against coronavirus are effective against the new fast-spreading strain identified in Britain, Germany's health minister said Sunday.
“According to everything we know so far” the new strain “has no impact on the vaccines”, which remain “just as effective”, Jens Spahn told public broadcaster ZDF, citing “talks among experts of European authorities”.
Spahn was referring especially to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which is already being administered in countries including the US and UK and which is on the brink of receiving approval from the European Medicines Agency.
The World Health Organization (WHO) called on its members in Europe to step up measures against coronavirus in the face of the new variant circulating in Britain, its European branch said Sunday.
Outside Britain, nine cases of the new strain have been reported in Denmark, as well as one case in the Netherlands and another in Australia, according to the WHO.
“Across Europe, where transmission is intense and widespread, countries need to redouble their control and prevention approaches,” a spokeswoman for WHO Europe told AFP.
The UN agency urged its members worldwide to “increase the sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 viruses where possible and sharing of sequence data internationally, in particular, to report if the same mutations of concern are found,” she said.
Several European countries decided Sunday to suspend all flights from Britain after the discovery of the new strain which London said was ''out of control''.
The WHO noted “preliminary signs that the variant may be able to spread more easily between people” and “preliminary information that the variant may affect (the) performance of some diagnostic assays (tests).”
It said it had “no evidence to indicate any change in disease severity, but this is also under investigation.”
For its part, the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said “ongoing circulation of this variant outside of the UK cannot be excluded.”
It advised that “people with an epidemiological link to cases with the new variant or travel history to areas known to be affected should be identified immediately to test, isolate and follow up their contacts in order to stop the spread of the new variant.”
The new strain's scientific name is VUI 202012/01, with VUI standing for Variant Under Investigation.
Last week, Europe became the first region in the world to pass 500,000 deaths from COVID-19 since the pandemic broke out a year ago, killing more than 1.6 million worldwide and pitching the global economy into turmoil.
Countries are shutting down their economies with restrictions again in a bid to rein in the virus.
The measures to control the fast-spreading new variant of the virus forbid household mixing in those areas and restrict socializing to just Christmas Day across the rest of England.
Residents across the country were told to keep to their local areas, and extra police were being deployed at rail stations to stop people traveling out of London.
“Cases have absolutely rocketed, so we’ve got a long way to go,” Hancock told Sky News.
“I think it will be very difficult to keep it under control until the vaccine has rolled out.” People in the new Tier 4 areas “should behave as though they have it,” he said.
Hancock said that as of Saturday morning 350,000 people had been vaccinated, with the ambition to reach 500,000 by the end of the weekend.