The emergence of a new strain of the CCP virus in southeast England is the “worst news” of the pandemic that has ravaged Britain and the rest of the world since March, a UK Government scientist has said. “If the vaccine is the best news, this is the worst news we’ve had so far,” Professor Andrew Hayward, director of the Institute of Epidemiology and Healthcare at University College London (UCL) told Sky News on Monday. Hayward is one of the government’s 17-member strong New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG). Speaking at a TV briefing on Saturday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said NERVTAG had found that the new variant spreads much faster than the original strain and Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty confirmed that Public Health England’s (PHE) genomic surveillance had also shown the faster spread. “NERVTAG’s early analysis suggests the new variant could increase the R [reproduction number] by 0.4 …