South Korea has reported first cases of COVID-19 variant linked to the drastic increase of coronavirus infections in the UK among three people who had entered the country from London on December 22, said the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) on December 28. While the pandemic has continued to tighten its grip across the world even after more than a year it was first originated in China, the South Korean officials have reportedly pledged to ramp-up the efforts to launch a public COVID-19 vaccination programme. The officials are reportedly now analysing the genome from another family of four people who arrived from the UK and have tested positive for the disease.
Just last week, the new variant of the novel coronavirus has been flagged for spreading rapidly across the UK for now. Even though it is a well-known fact that viruses mutate all the time and some of them even die out, it is a very rare occasion when the new strains trigger dramatic changes. However, with over 1,000 cases of the variant discovered in the UK, scientists are puzzled to determine if the variant, reportedly named as VUI-202012/01 falls into which category or if it represents an increased health risk especially when some nations began administering the COVID-19 vaccines among people.
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