New coronavirus variant: What do we know?
I think most people seem to be underestimating just how bad this is. During the recent 4-week lockdown it was already clear that something odd was going on in Kent; whilst case counts were dropping in the rest of the country, they continued to rise significantly there. Something was clearly different.<p>Now high case counts are spreading from the South East into the rest of the country. We don't know whether we can even stop the growth. During the last lockdown schools remained open; I suspect that it may be necessary to close them in order to just stop the growth. A significant reduction in cases looks impossible.<p>This strain has probably already spread to tens of other countries. Every country which is just about holding things together, whatever their strategy, is going to struggle with a significantly more transmissible variant of the virus.