Coronavirus News LIVE Updates: South African Covid-19 Variant May be ‘More Effective at Spreading’; One Million Vaccinated as US Eyes Return to Normal Next Summer

Coronavirus News LIVE Updates: The South African variant of Covid-19, two cases of which have now been detected in the UK, is likely to be more transmissible, may hit young people harder, and may be slightly more resistant to vaccines, scientists in South Africa believe. However, research is still continuing to confirm the threat posed by the variant, which does not appear to provoke more serious symptoms or require different treatment. There are also some fears that the more numerous individual mutations of the South African variant may make it able to “re-infect” individuals who have already caught the virus and recovered.

Scientists in South Africa are still working “calmly and methodically” to fully understand the new variant, known as 501Y.V2. Data on the South African variant, which has swept across a swath of the country, has already been compared by scientists to the UK variant detected last week. “Putting our data together with that in the UK, this [South African] variant is a bit more effective at spreading from person to person and that is not good. It means we have to get a bit better at stopping it,” said Dr Richard Lessells, one of the specialists leading research into the new variant in South Africa.