How dangerous is the new Covid-19 strain found in the UK? Countries including India impose flight ban; details

Even as the Indian government as a matter of caution has suspended the international flights coming from the United Kingdom, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has said that emergence of a new variant mutation of a virus is a common occurrence and not a cause of concern. The Indian government while suspending travel from the United Kingdom said that the decision was taken in the direction of enhanced epidemiological surveillance and containment, the Indian Express reported.

While the threat from the new variant of Coronavirus found in the United Kingdom has not still been confirmed, countries starting from European neighbours including Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands and many others have closed travel to and fro from Britain on the basis of caution. Information on the new variant of the Coronavirus traced in the UK is very limited and health experts have also not been able to reach any conclusion as to why the new strain of the virus has increased transmissibility.

In line with the finding of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, the Public Health England(PHE) had also said on Sunday that it had no evidence to say that patients getting infected with the new variant are suffering from severe disease or mortality. However, PHE did concede that the new strain is transmitting more easily than the previous strains of Covid-19. The PHE also made it clear that the measures taken to prevent infection from the new strain of virus are exactly what people have been taking to control the spread of Coronavirus- washing hands, wearing face masks and avoiding close contact with one another.

Only after a detailed analysis has been completed by the health experts in the coming weeks that the actual extent of the problem will get clear. Covid-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) which had first flagged the emergence of a new strain of Coronavirus that it would take considerable time and efforts to test the impact of the new strain.