New SARS-CoV-2 Variant Spreading Rapidly in UK

The significance of the variant remains unclear, but experts remain confident that it will not evade the protection offered by a COVID-19 vaccine.

Written byMax Kozlov

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Update (December 21): More than 40 countries have restricted UK arrivals while experts continue to investigate the implications of the variant. Oxford University epidemiologist Peter Horby, who chairs the UK New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group, tells a Science Media Centre briefing on Monday, “We now have high confidence that this variant does have a transmission advantage.” Despite the new findings, epidemiologists tell The New York Times that mutations are to be expected and that it would take a matter of years, not months, for a strain to evolve enough to render the current vaccines ineffective.

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As public health officials worldwide mount vaccination campaigns against COVID-19, a new SARS-CoV-2 variant has rapidly taken hold in the UK, leading scientists to investigate if it carries any implications for the transmissibility of the virus, severity of infection, and success of a vaccine, though experts say it is ...

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Meet the Author

Max Kozlov
Max is a science journalist from Boston. Though he studied cognitive neuroscience, he now prefers to write about brains rather than research them. Prior to writing for The Scientist as an editorial intern in late 2020 and early 2021, Max worked at the Museum of Science in Boston, where his favorite part of the job was dressing in a giant bee costume and teaching children about honeybees. He was also a AAAS Mass Media Fellow, where he worked as a science reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Read more of his work at www.maxkozlov.com.
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