UK virus strain has been in Germany since November; India records six cases of British strain

BERLIN: The new coronavirus strain sweeping Britain has been in Germany since November, health officials said on Tuesday, after detecting the variant in a patient who died in the north of the country.

Researchers were "able to sequence the variant of the B1.1.7 virus in a person infected in November this year", the health ministry of Lower Saxony said in a statement referring to the new strain.

This is the same strain "responsible for a large proportion of the infections detected in the south of England," it said. The variant was found in an elderly patient with underlying health conditions who has since died. His wife was also infected but survived.

The couple caught the virus after their daughter returned from a trip to Britain in mid-November, where she "in all likelihood" became infected with the new strain, the statement said.

Teams from the Hannover Medical School (MHH) were able to identify the new strain after sequencing the genome. The results were then confirmed by a team at Berlin’s Charite hospital, which included top German virologist Christian Drosten.

Germany had previously reported only one case of the new strain, in a woman who flew in from London on Thursday.The United States began a coronavirus vaccination campaign for its troops stationed in South Korea Tuesday as a third virus wave saw the host country record its highest daily death toll since the pandemic began.

US Forces Korea (USFK) administered initial doses of the Moderna vaccine for military and civilian healthcare workers, first responders and command staff across its medical treatment facilities in the country, it said in a statement.

Washington has around 28,500 troops stationed in South Korea to help it defend against the nuclear-armed North and protect US interests in north-east Asia. Among the inoculated included USFK Commander Robert Abrams, who was pictured receiving the shot in a mask and a T-shirt emblazoned with "#KilltheVirus".

The vaccination is voluntary but the USFK chief "strongly" encouraged American service members to receive it. "I want you to make an informed decision for you and your family regarding the vaccine," he said in the statement.

South Korea is one of the four overseas locations to receive the Moderna vaccine, which won emergency use authorisation from the US Food and Drug Administration on December 18. The inoculations came as a third wave of the virus grips the Asian country, with a resurgence centred on the greater Seoul area, which has seen daily cases climb to over 1,000 several times this month despite stricter measures.

The country reported 1,046 new cases and 40 deaths on Tuesday, its highest daily toll since it first identified an infection in January. It has reported a total of 58,725 coronavirus cases.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel held a video call late Monday, agreeing that the company will supply vaccine doses for 20 million South Koreans in the second quarter of 2021, according to Moon’s office.

If the Moderna agreement is formally signed, South Korea will have enough vaccines for 56 million people, a surplus of four million on the country’s total population, it added. It plans to launch the vaccination program in February.

South Korea has been praised as a model of how to combat the virus, with the public largely following official guidelines and authorities preventing a wider outbreak with an intensive "trace, test and treat" approach.

India has found six people who returned from the UK in recent weeks with the more infectious strain of the virus that has prompted border closures around the world, media reports. Nevertheless, the country’s daily increase in cases fell to a six-month low. All six patients have been kept in isolation, the health ministry has said, adding that their fellow travellers were being tracked down and their close contacts being put under quarantine.

India has suspended all flights from the UK until the end of the month but about 33,000 passengers had flown in from late November, before the ban, the ministry said. With 10.22m confirmed infections, India has the second-highest case load in the world, behind only the United States. But, on Tuesday, the health ministry reported 16,432 new cases, the lowest daily rise since 25 June.

Meanwhile, the United States began a coronavirus vaccination campaign for its troops stationed in South Korea on Tuesday as a third virus wave saw the host country record its highest daily death toll since the pandemic began.

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."