Doctors have warned that a new coronavirus variant 'already linked to one in 25 cases in the UK' could pile more pressure on the NHS, after already causing alarm in the USA. It comes as the health service continues to battle a variety of winter illnesses, including an increasing number of flu cases.
The latest Covid strain, which has been called XXB.1.5, is said to already make up some 40.5% of Covid-19 cases nationally in America, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and it is also thought that the strain has mutations which allow for the virus to infect more people quickly and bypass immunity. However, despite its ease of infecting more people quickly, experts have said that there is so far no indication that the XBB.1.5 strain is a more severe illness than previous variants.
The variant is itself a mutated version of the Omicron XBB strain, detected in Singapore, India and 33 other countries back in October, according to the World Health Service and around 4% of coronavirus cases in the week to December 17 were caused by XBB1.5, the Sanger Institute (one of the UK's largest Covid surveillance centres) reports. Professor Lawrence Young, a virologist at Warwick University, told MailOnline that the new mutated variant is a 'wakeup call' and could exacerbate the NHS crisis.
