The news of the COVID-19 vaccine being administered has been grabbing headlines of newspapers across the globe. While that deserves to be cheered, there seems to be yet another strain of the novel coronavirus in the United Kingdom that is causing worry.

• A new variant of coronavirus has been found which is spreading in some parts of England.
• The mutations include changes to the important “spike” protein that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus uses to infect human cells.
• This new strain is said to have been discovered in South England on 20 September 2020 and is being called VUI 202012/01 by scientists.
• The sudden spike in the number of cases in the UK is likely to be linked to this new strain.
• According to retired doctor Mohan Gupte, founder-director ICMR Epidemiology department Chennai, said in an interview with India Today, “This new variant is showing some 17 changes in the genome, this is a very large change. Due to this change, the transmissibility of this virus has also changed and is 70 per cent more infectious compared to the earlier variant.”
• This is not the only mutation that has been found in the novel coronavirus. An article by the BBC states that the vaccines being developed “train the immune system” to attack several different parts of the virus, giving us reasons to believe that there will still be a cure. However, experts believe that the virus will also be able to generate “vaccine escape mutants”.