Scientist Warns India-Related Variant can Trigger Another Wave

The India-related Coronavirus (COVID-19) variant could drive another wave in Britain, a British government advisory scientist warned on Thursday.

“The virus just got faster,” said Andrew Hayward, a professor from the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), indicating that Britain could be at start of third COVID-19 wave.

“That really brings it back down to this race against the vaccine and the virus,’’ Hayward, an infectious diseases expert at University College London, told the BBC.

“I think what we can see is that this strain can circulate very effectively, although it was originally imported through travel to India, its spread fairly effectively first of all within households and now more broadly within communities, so I don’t really see why it wouldn’t continue to spread in other parts of the country.

“Obviously, we are doing everything we can to contain the spread, but its likely that more generalised measures may start to be needed to control it,” he said.

Almost 3,000 cases of the COVID-19 variant first detected in India have been reported in Britain, British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said Wednesday.

Speaking at the House of Commons, lower house of the British Parliament, Hancock said 2,967 cases of the COVID-19 variant had been recorded as at Wednesday, 28 per cent up from the figure of more than 2,300 on Monday.

“Surge testing and vaccinations will be deployed in those areas including Bedford, Burnley, Hounslow, Kirklees, Leicester and North Tyneside,’’ Hancock said.

“The Scottish government is also taking similar steps in Glasgow and Moray.

“Fortunately, we have had a good proportion of the population vaccinated, but there are still people who aren’t vaccinated in high-risk groups, the vaccine isn’t 100 per cent effective.

“Also, even in the younger groups if you get many thousands or hundreds of thousands of cases, then you will expect a lot of hospitalisations and deaths to result from that.”

Hayward suggested he was in favour of restricting travel to stop variants being imported, saying “there is mixing involved in travelling both on airplanes, airports and in the country where you go to.’’

Nearly 37 million people or more than 70 per cent of adults in Britain have been given the first jab of the coronavirus vaccine, according to the latest official figures.

From Monday, as part of England’s lockdown easing plan, people were allowed to travel abroad to a number of green-list countries without having to quarantine upon return as the ban on foreign travel had also been lifted.

The British government’s roadmap is expected to see all legal limits on social contact to be removed on June 21.

To bring life back to normal, countries such as Britain, China, Russia, the U.S. as well as the European Union have been racing against time to roll out coronavirus vaccines.