This is bad—Berlin has just put an entire hospital under quarantine lockdown & diverting all patients after *20 patients & staff* tested positive for more infectious #B117 variant of #SARSCoV2 from UK. Spokesperson expects to confirm more soon. #COVID19 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-germany-variant-idUSKBN29S0KQ

2) This is why I urgently ask everyone to switch to premium masks ASAP if you can. https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1353186978519539712

3) Germany is heeding the dire warning from UK and Denmark CDC on the #B117– It is a beast. https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1346899021621813249

4) Basically, Denmark ’s CDC ( @SSI_dk) is so pessimistic that it believes the B117 will inevitably dominate the country and likely the world by Feb/March. And with its higher R of contagiousness, we either stop it now or we are completely screwed by spring time.

5) To be clear—even if we hold the virus in check with a minimum R=0.96... by the time the new virus variant takes hold, it will be woefully insufficient, since the B117 strain is 40-80% more infectious (multiply current R*1.4 or *1.8). Other experts agree....

6) Notably, the virus is such a beast—suppose we have 1000 cases/day now... with an R=0.86 we could reduce it to 500/day in 2 weeks.

But w/ added contagiousness of B117 variant that has ~60% higher R, in 2 weeks, 3000 new cases/day instead—

6x vs old.

HT @GosiaGasperoPhD