LONDON: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Wednesday that the deaths of 144 health care workers and 131 social care workers had been reported as involving COVID-19.The United Kingdom’s total COVID-19 death toll now exceeds 40,000, by far the worst yet reported in Europe. British researchers are studying the genes of thousands of ill COVID-19 patients to try to crack one of the most puzzling riddles of the novel coronavirus: why does it kill some people but give others not even a mild headache?
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Wednesday that increasing rates of infection in other countries which have relaxed some rules to tackle the coronavirus outbreak was a warning to Britain not to move too fast. “We are watching intently what is happening in other countries and it is very notable that in some other countries where relaxations have been introduced there are signs of the R (reproduction number) going up again, and that is a very clear warning to us not to proceed too fast or too recklessly,” Johnson told parliament.
Researchers from across the United Kingdom will sequence the genetic code of people who fell critically ill with COVID-19 and compare their genomes with those who were mildly ill or not ill at all.
The hunt for the specific genes that could cause a predisposition to getting ill with COVID-19 will involve up to 20,000 people currently or previously in hospital intensive care with COVID-19 and about 15,000 people with mild symptoms. Scientists caution that their knowledge of the novel coronavirus, which emerged in China last year, is still modest though they say it is striking how it can be so deadly for some but so mild for others. It is, as yet, unclear why. “We think that there will be clues in the genome that will help us understand how the disease is killing people,” Kenneth Baillie, an intensive care doctor who is leading the study at the University of Edinburgh, told Reuters.
