Boris Johnson says B117 may increase death rate as well as being up to 70% more transmissible
A new variant of Covid-19 that emerged in south-east England late last year and spread around the world may be more deadly than the coronavirus in circulation in the first wave of the epidemic, Boris Johnson has said.
Scientists on the government’s New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag) have concluded that the new variant, named B117, may increase the death rate by 30-40%.
