With the daily uprising of Covid-19 cases, UK’s Environmental Secretary has warned the country for a potential return of nationwide lockdown if a particular COVID-19 variant finds a way to evade the vaccines.
Eustace told Sky News, “Arguably the biggest threat to the travel industry is that if we do get another variant that manages to get around the vaccines. Then we’re into another full lockdown and that’s not what we want.”
“That’s why we’ve taken this cautiously, step by step because we want each step we take to be irreversible.”
Recommended Read: Mu and Delta COVID-19 Variants Compared: Which is More Dangerous?
Currently, the new Mu variant is a matter of concern as it’s believed to be resistant to vaccines. At the time of writing this post, Public Health England has already recorded over 50 (23 Mu cases in London alone) new Mu variant-related cases.
In the days ahead, PCR tests are likely to get scrapped. This will make the way for the fully jabbed lateral flow testing. Here Eustace issued a warning saying, “The rationale for the PCR test is that you can do genome sequencing of variants and you can, therefore, detect possible variants of concern.”
“The difficulty with the lateral flow test, although it is cheaper and simpler to do, it is not able to pick up those variants.”
What do you think about the possibility of a lockdown in the near future?
Would you support it or go against it?