https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55388846
The vaccines should still be effective. Concerns revolve around future mutations. Interestingly enough, the virus infecting most of the world is no longer the same as the Wuhan one.
Update on the new COVID strain found in UK.
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Tidewater News and Opinion Forum 
RE: “Concerns revolve around future mutations.”
Makes sense. I learned by googling that almost 13,000 mutations of the Covid-19 virus have been identified.
Still, I’m skeptical of the BBC report. The variant it describes was first detected in September. I wonder if it is too soon to be able to estimate a firm transmission rate. Surely a mortality rate estimate would be just as easy to compute, but the story doesn’t give one.
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More to come, I’m sure.
I got the impression that the new variant is not deadlier, but much more contagious.
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I had the same impression from the reports I heard over the weekend.
More people get it; fewer die from it? Still not great news.
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RE: “I got the impression that the new variant is not deadlier…”
Per your source, deadliness is not known.
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Don’t reads too much into this too soon. This may be a causation/correlation confusion.
No mechanism for increased transmission had been demonstrated. It may well be that this strain is more contagious, but we really don’t know.
The presumption that it is is based on the correlation that there was an uptick in cases in the area where it was discovered, but there were also upticks at the same time in other European nations, in particular, Germany, where this strain is not present.
Winter time changes behavior and lower humidity weakens our physical defenses against virus penetration.
So, we should be watchful on this, and maybe restrict travel until we know, but it may just be coincidence.
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