Alarm as new Covid-19 strain spreads worldwide

The US and Chile yesterday reported their first cases of the more contagious variant of Covid-19 after several European and Asian countries confirmed its presence. 

The novel coronavirus has killed at least 1,791,033 people since the outbreak emerged in China last December. More than 81,933,390 cases of coronavirus have been registered. Over Tuesday, 14,973 new deaths and 752,217 new cases were recorded worldwide.

In Germany, daily coronavirus death toll crossed 1,000 for the first time yesterday, with politicians predicting an extension of the county's partial lockdown beyond the current January 10 deadline.

Latin America and the Caribbean on Tuesday became the second region after Europe to top half a million deaths from Covid-19, according to an AFP count based on official tallies.

Meanwhile, the US state of Colorado has recorded what is reportedly America's first case of the particularly infectious coronavirus variant that emerged recently in Britain, the governor said Tuesday.

In India, authorities yesterday were trying to track down tens of thousands of people who entered the country from Britain in recent weeks as cases of the new coronavirus strain more than doubled in 24 hours.

They have launched efforts to locate around 33,000 people who flew to India in the last month from the UK after 20 people tested positive for the new, more virulent strain -- up by 14 cases since Tuesday.

India yesterday also extended the ban on flights to and from Britain by a week to January 7 in a bid to combat the new strain that British authorities say is no more deadly, but which spreads more easily.

More than 3,000 cases of the variant have already been reported in the UK and dozens of countries in Europe and around the world.

Chile's health authorities said on Tuesday they had detected a case of the new coronavirus strain, the first such confirmed infection in Latin America. The case was found in a Chilean woman who returned to the country on December 21 from Madrid, having also traveled to Britain and Dubai.