The new coronavirus strain sweeping Britain has been in Germany since November, health officials said, after detecting the variant in a patient who died in the north of the country.
Researchers were “able to sequence the variant of the B1.1.7 virus in a person infected in November this year”, the health ministry of Lower Saxony said in a statement referring to the new strain. This is the same strain “responsible for a large proportion of the infections detected in the south of England,” it said.
According to AFP, the variant was found in an elderly patient with underlying health conditions who has since died. His wife was also infected but survived.
