In a new report on Tuesday, the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control estimated that variants of the virus, more contagious, were likely to have an effect "higher on the number of hospitalizations and the number of deaths" than the strain common virus.

The risk is "high" that the recently identified Covid-19 variants are a source of additional pressure on health systems and a higher cause of mortality due to their greater contagiousness, estimated the European Center for Prevention and disease control (ECDC) in a report released Tuesday. 

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A probable "increased transmissibility"

The ECDC estimates that, "if there is no information on more severe infections" with these variants, their greater contagiousness will have an estimated "higher impact on the number of hospitalizations and the number of deaths".

This is particularly true for "the elderly or (for people) with co-morbidity", continues the agency, headquartered in Stockholm. 

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This report is more particularly devoted to the variants recently discovered in Great Britain and South Africa, which suggest "an increased transmissibility".

More than 3,000 cases of the British variant have already been identified in the UK and around the world.

Nearly 300 cases of another variant of the coronavirus have been recorded in South Africa, for three cases in Europe (two in the United Kingdom and one in Finland) in people returning from South Africa.