STOCKHOLM/MUMBAI: The EU health agency ECDC said on Tuesday that the risk was “high” that newly discovered virus variants causing Covid-19 could further strain healthcare and cause more deaths due to “increased transmissibility.”

The Stockholm-based European Centre Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said in a report that “although there is no information that infections with these strains are more severe,” the fact that they would spread more easily means that the impact on “hospitalisations and deaths is assessed as high.”

Just like previously circulating virus variants, this was particularly true for “those in older age groups or with co-morbidities,” the agency added.

The report specifically addressed the two new variants discovered in the UK and in South Africa, both of which show signs of “increased transmissibility.” More than 3,000 cases of the UK variant have already been reported in the UK and dozens of countries in Europe and around the world, according to the ECDC.

In South Africa, more than 300 cases of another variant have been recorded and three cases of the same variant have been confirmed in Europe, two in the UK and one in Finland, but all three have been connected to people returning from South Africa.

The health agency recommended countries to continue advising citizens “of the need for non-pharmaceutical interventions in accordance with their local epidemiological situation” with a particular focus on “non-essential travel and social activities.” The ECDC also recommended a number of options for “delaying the introduction and further spread of a new variant of concern,” including targeted sequencing of community cases to “detect early and monitor the incidence of the variant.” In addition it recommended increased “follow-up and testing” of people linked to areas with higher numbers of the variant and also remind people coming from such areas of the need to “comply with quarantine” and getting tested.

India finds six cases

India has found six cases of a more infectious strain of the coronavirus, which has prompted border closures around the world, in people arriving from Britain and will likely extend a flight ban to guard against it, officials said on Tuesday.

All six of the infected people had been kept in isolation, the health ministry said in a statement, adding that their fellow travellers were being traced.

“Their close contacts have also been put under quarantine,” the ministry said.

India had suspended all flights from Britain until the end of the month over worry about the infectious variant of the virus but about 33,000 passengers had flown in from late November, before the ban was enforced, the ministry said.

Of those arrivals, 114 people were found positive for the coronavirus and their samples were being checked for the new variant, which has been detected across parts of Europe and Asia, it said.

Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said the ban on flights from Britain would probably remain in force into the New Year. “I foresee a slight extension,” Puri told reporters.

Published in Dawn, December 30th, 2020