Covid variant 'taking over' UK and likely to dominate elsewhere: Report

London - Evidence from the UK suggests B.1.1.7. is likely to become dominant elsewhere too.

A coronavirus variant first found a few months ago in Britain is now “taking over” and causing 98 per cent of all cases in the UK, the scientist leading the country’s variant-tracking research said on Thursday.

Sharon Peacock said the UK variant, known as B.1.1.7, also appears to be gaining a firm grip in many of the 100 or so other countries it has spread to in the past few months.

“It’s around 50 per cent more transmissible - hence its success in really taking over the country,” said Peacock, director of the Covid-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) consortium of scientists monitoring mutations in the coronavirus.

“We now know that it has spread across the UK and causes nearly all of the cases of COVID-19 - about 98 per cent,” she told an online briefing for Britain’s Royal Society of Medicine.

“It appears to be the case that the other variants are not getting a foothold in this country.”

The B.1.1.7 variant, first detected in September 2020, has 23 mutations in its genetic code - a relatively high number of changes - and is thought by experts to be 40%-70% more transmissible than previously dominant variants.

Peacock also noted data released on Wednesday from a UK study which found that B.1.1.7 has “significantly higher” mortality, with death rates among those infected with it between 30 per cent and 100 per cent greater than among those infected with previous variants.

“There is a small increase in the likelihood of death from the variant,” she said.