Kent Covid strain could be twice as deadly – worrying update from British Medical Journal

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Vaccines may seem like the final chapter of the pandemic but new research suggests it’s too early to return to normality. The Kent strain – the dominant strain circulating in the UK – is twice as deadly as other strains, new research suggests. The findings in the British Medical Journal are based on analysis of 110,000 COVID-19 patients.

Epidemiologists from the universities of Exeter and Bristol identified 227 deaths in a sample of 55,000 NHS patients with the Kent variant.

This compared to 141 deaths in a similar sample of patients with older variants.

Following a comparative analysis they concluded the variant called B.1.1.7 is between 30 percent and 100 percent as deadly.

Researchers qualified tha the real increase in mortality risk is likely somewhere in the middle of these two figures.

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