Countries tighten restrictions over new COVID strains

BEIJING -- Countries around the world have tightened their restrictive measures and accelerated the race for vaccines after several new strains of the coronavirus have been reported recently in different parts of the world.

The new COVID-19 strains have sounded a fresh alarm as the global caseload hit a new grim milestone of 80 million on Saturday, with over 1.7 million coronavirus-related deaths.

New COVID-19 Strains

On Dec 20, British Health Secretary Matt Hancock warned that a new strain of COVID-19 was "out of control" in Britain.

"It is going to be very difficult to keep it under control until we have the vaccine rolled out," he said. "We know with this new variant you can catch it more easily from a small amount of the virus being present."

The British government's Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance has said the new variant was first seen in mid-September in London and Kent.

By December, the new variant had become the "dominant variant" in London, and by the week ending Dec 9, it had accounted for 62 percent of cases in London, 59 percent of those in eastern England, and 43 percent in the southeast, according to Vallance.

Days later, two cases of another new variant of the virus were also identified in Britain.

"Both are contacts of cases who have travelled from South Africa over the past few weeks," Hancock said Wednesday.