Those in the lookout for good Covid news will found precious little of it in Boris Johnson’s latest Covid press conference. Although the Prime Minister had cause for optimism in the form of the vaccine rollout – over 5.4 million people have now received their first dose of the vaccine, one in ten adults, – the overall message was of difficult times ahead.
Johnson said there was evidence to suggest that the ‘Kent variant’ not only spreads faster but is deadly. The PM pointed to data assessed by scientists on the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group which, he said, suggested the variant could be up to 30 per cent more deadly than the original.
Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance urged caution, warning that the evidence on lethality ‘is not yet strong’. There was no increase in mortality for hospitalised Covid cases, he said, but the higher risk seemed to be amongst the population at large. Only
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