[GVIrish]

One word: variant. Variant B1617 has emerged and India and seems like it could be driving a surge.

There's not a lot of data yet on that variant's transmissibility and lethality but it has already been detected in the UK.

Thus far it doesn't seem to be as dangerous as the Brazilian P1 variant, but could be trouble just the same.

[sir-alien]

Although the variant is in the U.K it's not yet believed to have come from overseas travel. So maybe this is a variant that has a higher likelihood of mutation in a specific demographic (e.g. Indian).

Speculation at this point to be honest.

[curryst]

> So maybe this is a variant that has a higher likelihood of mutation in a specific demographic (e.g. Indian).

Is this a thing that's known to have occurred in other viruses? It seems rather unlikely compared to the chance that it came from someone asymptomatic or someone who skipped over the border controls via boat or something like that.

I'd be careful speculating over demographics. There's been a wave of violence against Asian (largely Chinese, Japanese and Korean) people in the US, believed to be caused at least in part by our former president accusing China of accidentally releasing the virus. I wouldn't want some populist to latch on to this theory and start blaming Indian people for variants.

[GVIrish]

Huh? There are flights arriving daily from India, India was where the strain was first detected months ago, and in some parts of India it is the predominant strain. Neither of the two mutations that strain has acquired match the mutation that the B117 (which now dominates the UK and in process of dominating US) strain has.

Multiple trails of evidence pointing to it's emergence in India, and right now the UK is not restricting travel from India so the most likely scenario is that it arrived in the UK from someone who traveled to India or another country where that strain is spreading.

[tim333]

They will restrict from Friday https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-56806103