The government's New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (or Nervtag) has concluded that the new Covid-19 strain may be a bit more lethal than the existing strain. I've spoken to the influential Nervtag member, Prof Neil Ferguson ( @neil_ferguson)...

about this. He has given me this statement: "it is a realistic possibility that the new UK variant increases the risk of death, but there is considerable remaining uncertainty. Four groups - Imperial, LSHTM, PHE and Exeter - have looked at the relationship between people...

testing positive for the variant vs old strains and the risk of death. That suggests a 1.3-fold increased risk of death. So for 60 year-olds, 13 in 1000 might die compared with 10 in 1000 for old strains. The big caveat is that we only know which strain people were infected...

with for about 8% of deaths. Only about 25% of people who eventually die from COVID get a pillar 2 test before they are hospitalised (at which point they get a pillar 1 test, but pillar 1 tests don’t tell us which strain they were infected with). And we can only...

distinguish the new variant from the old variant for about 1/3 of pillar 2 tests. All that said, the signal is there and is consistent across different age groups, regions and ethnicities." The worrying news is that although treatments for Covid-19 have improved, the new

strain does seem to be more lethal. I understand @uksciencechief will address this issue at the press conferene with @BorisJohnson later today

The original work on the lethality of the new strain was done by Nick Davies of the @LSHTM, and has been checked and rechecked by assorted other experts (including, obviously, Prof Ferguson)