Expert warns coronavirus ‘expected to mutate’ and be ‘more dangerous’

The government’s chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty has said on Thursday coronavirus can “theoretically mutate” and could “become even more dangerous.”

Speaking at a press conference in London Dr Whitty said, “With the strong caveat this is speculative science, we would expect the virus to mutate because all viruses do mutate.

“The question is whether those mutations are relevant.

“There is a lot of talk on social media on could this virus become more dangerous as it mutates?

“Whilst theoretically possible, the general tendency is they tend to become less virulent over time as they become adapted to the new host.”

The government’s chief scientific advisor, Sir Patrick Vallance said at the conference it would be “remarkable” if the UK could keep the coronavirus death toll to the normal 8,000 flu cases annualy.

The scientific advisor said, “The first thing to say, and it goes without saying, is that all deaths are tragedies for people and their families and you want to try to minimise that.

“There are 8,000 or so deaths from flu in an average season – it can be more than that in the bad season.

“And if we can contain this down to the sort of level where it looks comparable to that, which would be a remarkable achievement, then that would be an outcome which is really quite remarkable given that we haven’t got vaccines and other things.”

Londoners woke up in Thursday morning to no water affecting around 25,000 people. South West Londoners were left with no water and had to find another way to wash their hands, with more pressure added as thousands are now working from home.

Thames Water said in a statement they were treating the matter as an urgency and said several postcodes in South West and West London had either no water or low pressure.

The true cause of how the coronavirus spread has been revealed by Chinese scientists who have broken cover and said the oubreak started in a science laboratory in Wuhan yards away from a wet market.

They have sensationally spoke out and said the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan was due to the scientists researching bat diseases and could be responsible.

A scientist told how a sick bat attacked the researchers and bled on them and urinated on another, they were then forced to quarantine themselves for 14 days.

A spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry has suggested the US military may have bought the deadly coronavirus to Wuhan, China which was the epicentre of the outbreak.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian has accused the US that they lack transparency.

He wrote on Twitter, “When did patient zero begin in US? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals?

It has been reported that coronavirus was part of a Chinese “biological weapons” program, based at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which has seen at least two leaks of viruses in the last three years.

Conservative MP, Tobias Elwood who was the chairman of the British Defence Select Committee from 2017 until 2019, expressed concerns last month over the Chinese Army’s role at the Wuhan Institute for Biological Products and called for the “greater transparency over the origins of the coronavirus.”