Everything we should know about Covid bug that ruined Christmas
Tags: Death, Covid 19 Crisis, Covid 19, Coronavirus, Health

A new strain of the coronavirus is ripping through the south east of England — and its ruined Christmas for millions of peope.

Today Health Secretary Matt Hancock warned the new Covid-19 variant is “out of control” and those in the new Tier 4 should behave as though they have it.

The way in which the virus has mutated means that it is now able to spread much more easily, scientists have said.

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As a result, daily cases are shooting up in London, Kent and parts of Essex.

In a bid to get infections under control, yesterday the Prime Minister cancelled Christmas for millions of people in the South East.

The PM was joined on stage by England’s chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty.

He stressed that there was currently no evidence that the new strain causes higher mortality rates or affected vaccines and treatments.

However, the Government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, warned the new variant was becoming the dominant strain, with a rapid rise in cases in recent days.

Below we have tried to answer your questions about the new strain of the coronavirus that has thrown a big spanner in the festive works.

Have your Christmas plans been ruined by the new Covid-19 restrictions? Let us know at

Is this something unusual?

There have been many mutations in the virus since it emerged in 2019.

This is to be expected — SARS-CoV-2 is an RNA virus and these viruses mutate and change.

Public Health England (PHE) said that, as of December 13, 1,108 cases with this new variant had been identified, predominantly in the south and east of England.

However, only one in 20 of swabs taken are tested, meaning the number was likely closer to 22,000 at that point.

It has been named VUI-202012/01, the first variant under investigation in December.

Prof Whitty said that the UK has informed the World Health Organisation that the new variant coronavirus can spread more rapidly.

In a statement on Saturday, he said that following the rapid spread of the new variant, preliminary modelling data and rapidly rising incidence rates in the South East, the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG) now consider that the new strain can spread more quickly.

If the virus spreads faster it will be harder to control.

However, there have already been various strains of Covid-19 with no real consequence.

The Covid-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) consortium said it is difficult to predict whether any given mutation is important when it first emerges, and that it would take “considerable time and effort to test the effect of many thousands of combinations of mutations”.

It said the biggest concern is any changes that lead to an increase in reinfections or vaccine failure, and that most attention is on mutations in the gene that encodes the spike protein.

There are currently about 4,000 mutations in the spike protein gene.