Coronavirus: Italy

(asked on 17th December 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether there is any evidence of variants of COVID-19 which can be traced to specific countries of origin; and if so, what proportion of reported COVID-19 cases have been linked to the variant of COVID-19 from Italy.


Answered by
Lord Bethell Portrait
Lord Bethell
This question was answered on 13th January 2021

It is common for viruses to mutate - over 4,000 variants of SARS-CoV-2 have been identified worldwide. The United Kingdom has a world leading surveillance system that supports the detection, analysis and identification of any variants circulating globally which may be of concern.

COVID-19 Genomics UK will continue to lead on monitoring virus samples for new variants. The Department and Public Health England will continue to study the virus closely to understand how it is behaving, where it might have originated from and the spread of the new variant across the UK.

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