England’s chief medical officer has warned that the Indian variant will come to “dominate” coronavirus cases in the UK.
Boris Johnson also admitted the strain could make it more difficult to move to the last stage of easing lockdown in June.
In response the prime minister announced plans to slash the amount of time the over-50s and the clinically vulnerable have to wait for their second dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, from 12 weeks to 8.
There was no need to delay the road map reopening set for Monday, which will see people able to socialise indoors.
But the June 21 date is now in jeopardy, he suggested. And he warned that if the new variant turned out to be much more transmissible than other strains, the country could face “hard choices” ahead.
Scientific advice released Mr Johnson was speaking said it was a “realistic possibility” that the Indian variant is as much as 50 per cent more transmissible than the Kent variant, which spread rapidly across the UK this winter.
Professor Chris Whitty told a Downing Street press conference: “We expect over time this variant will overtake and come to dominate in the UK” in the same way the Kent strain did.