As promised, the government of New Brunswick gave a special presentation to provide information about the UK variant strain of COVID-19 recently discovered in the province.

Dr. Gordon Dow, an infectious disease specialist with Horizon Health Network and a member of New Brunswick’s pandemic task force, says that the UK variant is between 30-80 per cent more infectious.

The more infectious strain has the capability of exponentially spreading across the province, causing more deaths from the disease in the process.

“If your reproduction number [R] is above one, that leads to exponential spread of the virus. Which means instead of just infecting one more person every few days, you’re actually infecting two or more," Dow said.

As for the slow turnaround time for variant testing, Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Russell says that she has been talking with the Georges Dumont lab to see if variant testing could be done there.

As of right now, more aggressive self-isolation protocols and contact tracing are being used to try and stay ahead of the spread.

All those who contracted the UK variant, or are suspected to have it, must self-isolate for 21 days rather than 14.

Dow says that he is not concerned about the one week delay, as the way Public Health responds to a regular outbreak is the same way they respond to a suspected variant.

Both the Minister of Health Dorothy Shephard and Russell stressed that when it comes to variants it’s a "day-by-day, week-by-week" learning process.

Hear this story as reported by CMHA here: