One of the UK’s most highly regarded microbiologists, whose laboratory at Cambridge University is at the forefront of the UK’s research into Covid-19, says the new variant of Covid-19 discovered in South Africa, B.1.1.529, is of “significant concern to the scientific community”. Prof. Ravindra Gupta, Professor of Clinical Microbiology at the Cambridge Institute for Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Diseases, says this is because the mutations on this variant are more numerous than other variants and, therefore, it’s likely to be both more transmissible than earlier variants, including Delta, and also more resistant to vaccines.