Britain would share its genomic sequencing capabilities to help quicker identify new variants of COVID-19 in nations with less ability to do so, the British Department of Health and Social Care said yesterday.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has warned that the prospect of a “vaccine-busting” variant could mean that lockdown measures are needed for longer and new travel restrictions are introduced.
Britain said it had carried out more than half of the SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences submitted to a global database, and would launch a New Variant Assessment Platform that could be used for variants and future pandemics.
“Our New Variant Assessment Platform will help us better understand this virus and how it spreads, and will also boost global capacity to understand coronavirus, so we’re all better prepared for whatever lies ahead,” British Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock was to say in a speech at Chatham House, according to advance extracts released by the department.
The three major variants of concern identified so far were discovered in Britain, South Africa and Brazil. All three are thought to be more transmissible.
The variant discovered in Britain could also be associated with higher mortality, although the evidence around that is uncertain.
Scientist have also highlighted particular concern that vaccines might not work as well against the variants found in South Africa and Brazil.
Hancock and other health officials have said that they believe the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines being rolled out in the kingdom work against the UK variant.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
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China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing