Expert in the United Kingdom said that the new type of coronavirus is likely now in most if not all European countries.
Neil Ferguson, the Director at MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College London, said that authorities picking up ten cases of the variant in a country as poor as Denmark with a relatively low infection rate “would suggest … that this virus has been entered into the great majority if not all of the European nations at the current time.”
Ferguson was speaking about the new alternative alongside other experts before the UK’s Science and Technology Committee.
So far, only a few cases of the new variant, which was first published in the UK in September, have been recorded internationally.
Cases have been found in Iceland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Italy and Belgium, according to the World Health Organization. Outdoor of Europe, there have been four confirmed cases of the new variant in Australia.
But UK experts say that other nations have lower sequencing capabilities, meaning they may not be as likely to find the new variant in patients.
Ferguson said that although the UK does “disproportionately sequence”, experts hypothesise that the exception originated in Kent.
“Epidemiologically, it looks like a point source radiating out from a location, but we cannot completely rule out that it was an importation into that part of the country from elsewhere in the world,” said Ferguson.
The comments came after several European countries closed their borders to the United Kingdom in an effort to stop the spread of the variant, which officials say is more transmissible and growing rapidly in southeastern England and in London.
France has now reopened its border for citizens, residents and those with a “legitimate reason” to travel but only if they test negative for coronavirus within 72 hours of travel.
The European Commission had called on member countries to lift full travel bans on the UK.
“Blanket travel bans should not prevent thousands of EU and UK citizens from returning to their homes,” said Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders after several countries stopped flights coming from the UK.
Science committee chair Greg Clark, a Conservative MP, asked if the UK was being penalised for its clarity of information on the new variant.
“It is fair to say that countries that have more general, more rigorous science and are very open and transparent obviously do expose themselves to important information being made available to others,” said Professor Peter Horby, chair of the UK’s New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG).
European colleagues, Horby added, had said they needed to replicate what is being done in the UK.
Public Health England identified the variant following an investigation of unusually rapid transmission in south-east England.