UK finds cases of new strain; WHO to scrap Wuhan report

LONDON: British health officials said on Thursday they have identified 16 cases of a new variant of the Covid-19 virus in England while the World Health Organization (WHO) team that was probing the origins of the pandemic has decided to scrap its interim report, according to a media report.

Public Health England (PHE) said cases of the variant, known as B.1.1.318, were first identified on February 15 and it was understood to have originated in the United Kingdom.

“All individuals who tested positive and their contacts have been traced and advised to isolate,” PHE said in a statement.

It said the strain had been declared a Variant Under Investigation (VUI) and contained the E484K mutation which is a feature of the South African and Brazilian variants.

However, it does not feature the N501Y mutation which appears in variants of concern (VOC), the PHE said.

Meanwhile, a Wall Street Journal news report from Thursday said a WHO team investigating the origins of Covid-19 is planning to scrap an interim report on its recent mission to China.

No further information was immediately available about the reasons for the delay in publishing the findings of the Who-led mission to the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the first human cases of Covid-19 were detected in late 2019.

China refused to give raw data on early cases to a Who-led team probing the origins of the pandemic, Dominic Dwyer, one of the team’s investigators said last month, potentially complicating efforts to understand how the outbreak began.

The probe had been plagued by delays, concern over access and bickering between Beijing and Washington, which accused China of hiding the extent of the initial outbreak and criticised the terms of the visit, under which Chinese experts conducted the first phase of research.

The team, which arrived in China in January and spent four weeks looking into the origins of the outbreak, was limited to visits organised by their Chinese hosts and prevented from contact with community members, due to health restrictions. The first two weeks were spent in hotel quarantine.

Bolsonaro tells Brazilians to ‘stop whining’

President Jair Bolsonaro on Thursday urged Brazilians to “stop whining” about Covid-19 and renewed his attacks on stayat-home measures to contain the pandemic, amid a surge of cases that is pushing hospitals to the brink.

“Stop whining. How long are you going to keep crying about it?” Bolsonaro said at an event in the central state of Goais.

“We regret the deaths .... But where’s Brazil going to end up if we just close everything?”

Nearly 260,000 people have died of Covid-19 in Brazil, the second-highest pandemic death toll in the world after the United States.