Variant from India may be spreading in UK less quickly: Top scientist

This article is more than 12 months old

May 20, 2021 06:00 am

LONDON The Covid-19 variant first identified in India may be spreading less quickly than first feared, a leading British epidemiologist said yesterday, but vaccines might be less effective at limiting its spread.

Professor Neil Ferguson, an epidemiologist at Imperial College London, told BBC radio: "There is ... a glimmer of hope from the recent data that, while this variant does still appear to have a significant growth advantage, the magnitude of that advantage seems to have dropped a little bit with the most recent data."

But he said more data was needed.

Professor Graham Medley at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said while the variant was growing quickly in some places, "we have not yet seen it take off and grow rapidly everywhere else".

He said key in the coming weeks is how far it spread outside of those areas. - REUTERS