UK PM says need to tackle 'double mutant' COVID-19 variant from India 'very carefully'

UK’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Friday that the government needs to handle the coronavirus ‘double mutant’ variant that first originated in India “very carefully”. His remarks came after the Public Health England (PHE) expressed worry earlier yesterday about the new B.1.617.2 or the "variant of concern” spreading at a faster rate in different parts of the UK. Britain scientists have warned that the new variant that originated in India was more virulent and spreading much quicker than the other mutations of the coronavirus. 

"We're doing a huge amount, obviously, to make sure that when we do find outbreaks of the Indian variant that we do surge testing, that we do door-to-door testing," Prime Minister Boris Johnson told a conference. He, however, added that there was insufficient evidence whether the new double mutation of the coronavirus had a higher mortality rate, caused a more severe COVID-19 disease, or evaded the vaccines. Johnson said that the scientists were now conducting laboratory testing to determine the impact of the new variants of the coronavirus, whether some mutations made the virus more dangerous than the others. 

£29.3 million funding for variant testing labs

Earlier this week, Johnson’s administration had allocated £29.3 million ($40.6 million, 33.8 million euros) in funding to set up more labs for COVID-19 testing and ramping up the manufacturing of the vaccines amid fear of the spread of the new variant. In an emailed statement, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s administration reportedly said that it plans to set up the "state of the art" laboratories at the Porton Down military research facility for research and manufacture of jabs against the variants of concern.

Scientists will test more than 3,000 blood samples a week to estimate the antibodies generated by the vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 variants to determine their efficacy. This comes after  Public Health England’s data found nearly 77 cases of the B.1.617 variant already in the UK. Professor Paul Hunter, professor of infectious diseases at the University of East Anglia and a World Health Organization adviser told a local newspaper he was “more worried” about the spread of the ‘double mutation’ variant than the South African variant, because of the potential that the Indian variant could be resistant to vaccines.