* Imperial College London researchers analyzed how quickly the new B117 ‘super-COVID’ variant spreads
* They compared samples of the mutated virus taken from nearly 2,000 people in the UK to another 84,000 taken from people with other variants
* B117 has a ‘R’ number that is between 0.4 to 0.7 points higher than others
* R numbers measure how many additional cases result from each infection
* Currently the US has an R of about 1.15. The UK’s is between 1.1 and 1.3
* If the new virus variant became dominant in the US it could drive up transmissions and cases by about 48 percent
* It also seems to spread more commonly and quickly among people in their 20s
The new mutant variant of ‘super’ coronavirus is indeed more infectious than previous variants, just as scientists feared, a new study finds.
Imperial College London researchers found that the new variant that’s been wreaking havoc in the UK and arrived in the UK may be nearly 50 percent more transmissible, based on samples taken from nearly 86,000 Britons.
That may not sound like much more, but each infected person leads currently leads to 1.15 more infections in the US, according to daily calculations from RT.live.
