NEW VARIANT CAUSES HIGHER MORTALITY, SAYS UK PM JOHNSON

LONDON/BEIJING: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Friday that there was evidence a new variant of Covid-19 discovered late last year could be associated with higher mortality.

“We’ve been informed today that in addition to spreading more quickly, it also now appears that there is some evidence that the new variant - the variant that was first discovered in London and the southeast (of England) - may be associated with a higher degree of mortality,” he told a news briefing.

Johnson added that all the current evidence showed both vaccines remain effective against old and new variants.

Beijing, meanwhile, has begun testing over 2mn residents in two districts, while Shanghai started checking hospital staff as China continued to battle the worst outbreak since last March. The Beijing district tests could be a run-up to the testing of the remaining 20mn in the capital as Chinese New Year holidays approach.

China also reported its first cluster of Covid-19 cases among workers at a meat processing plant in Harbin in northeast.