COVID levels dip in UK as officials review variant found in India

The number of people infected with the coronavirus in England fell by almost half over the past month, marking the lowest level of COVID-19 cases since last year, according to new statistics released in London on Thursday.

The Imperial College London led Real-time Assessment of Community Transmission (REACT-1) study comes as it emerged that the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) is due to hold a review meeting on Thursday to discuss the Variant of Concern (VOC) first identified in India, which UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Parliament was of “increasing concern” as it may be “considerably more transmissible” than the dominant variant in the UK first detected in the county of

Kent last year.

The variant B.1.617.2 is one of three subtypes of the mutation first detected in India and was designated as a VOC by Public Health England (PHE), with over 800 cases being traced in parts of the country. “The scientists on SAGE will make their assessments, they will report back to the government and we will make decisions based on the data and the evidence that they provide,” said James Cleverly, UK Foreign Office minister.

It is feared that the June 21 date set in the UK government’s complete lockdown easing roadmap may be impacted from the SAGE analysis. The European Medicines Agency has said that it is pretty confident that vaccines currently in use are effective against the variant B.1.617.2, which remains the view of scientists in the UK at this stage.