UK COVID-19 variant should be thought of as ‘brand new virus’: expert

The highly contagious UK coronavirus variant should be treated as “almost a brand new virus,” an expert said Monday.

Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, warned against assuming that the variant acts like previously known strains of the virus that causes COVID-19. “We have to think about the B.1.1.7 variant as almost a brand new virus,” he told CNN.