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New COVID strain fast spreading in the UK! Here’s India’s take on it

United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson sent shockwaves across the globe when he recently announced that the new strain of coronavirus spreading in the country is 70 percent more infectious than the original.

Following the move, many European countries started to close their borders with the country, with banning flights to the UK.

As the British government warned that a potent new strain of the virus was “out of control” countries like the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Belgium and others, imposed flight ban to the UK.

In India, Union health minister Harsh Vardhan on Monday said the government was monitoring the developments related to the new mutant coronavirus strain that was found in Britain, and asked citizens to not panic about it.

“At this time, I would say, dont get hassled with imaginary situations, imaginary talks and imaginary panic. The government is fully alert. In the last one year, as you all have seen, we took all necessary measures to ensure the safety of people. If you ask me, there’s no reason to panic so much," the
Health Minister said.

Harsh Vardhan’s remarks came shortly after Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal urged the government in a tweet: "New mutation of corona virus has emerged in UK, which is a super- spreader. I urge central government to ban all flights from UK immediately."

The mutant virus was first detected in southeast England in September. It is quickly becoming the dominant strain in London and other parts of the UK.

Over the last one week, the number of cases in London doubled, with at least 60 percent of the infections being from this strain.

While the variant is found across UK, it is heavily concentrated in London and South East England.

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Experts called at Sellafield Nuclear Processing Site in UK

During a routine inspection at the Sellafield Nuclear processing plant in Cumbria, UK, it was found that a category of the processing chemicals had changed state. Soon, bomb disposal experts were brought at the Magnox site at Sellafield. The chemical was organic peroxide, which was found to have changed its state and steps were followed as per the regulations of the Explosive Ordnance Disposal. The EOD requires the said chemical to be incinerated at a designated pit under the specific specialist disposal rules. The nuclear processing site has been evacuated. The storage facility has been segregated from the parts of the plants handling nuclear operations. The risk posed by the changed chemical state of the organic peroxide has been identified as a conventional safety risk, not a nuclear safety risk.

The Sellafield is a large scale multi-functional nuclear site near the Cumbria Coast in north west of England. The only operations being carried out at the site are nuclear decommissioning and nuclear waste storage as of 2020. The site has the first generation of UK’s nuclear reactors. It is the site with the world’s first full scale nuclear reactor power station to generate electricity on an industrial scale.  This site has the Magnox design of nuclear reactor which incorporates natural uranium as fuel, graphite as moderator and carbon dioxide as coolant in a heat exchange format. It is a type of gas cooled nuclear reactor site. In UK, it had dual purpose of generating electricity and producing Plutonium 239 for nuclear weapons. Magnox plant at Sellafield was non-operational at the time of the detection and would remain in the same state till the time the chemical is safely disposed away.