soumya swaminathan , thank you for your time this morning. chief scientist at the world health organization. the u.k. in an emergency lockdown. year of having a swift response. -- europe having a swift response. this is bloomberg. ♪ "bloombergme to markets: european open." cash trade is less than an hour away. london's emergency lockdown. christmas is canceled from millions. theprime minister says latest mutation of the virus is impossible to

soumya swaminathan, chief scientist at the who, speaking to my colleague annmarie hordern earlier onmore on the markets and the response we are seeing from various countries around the world to the latest outbreak in the u.k. norway holding flights from the u.k. an irish minister saying that a 48 hour travel ban is likely to be extended. all of this weighing heavily on assets this morning. this is bloomberg. ♪ him back to the european market open -- welcome back to the european market open. down 1.8% on the stoxx 600. when i woke up this morning, i saw the news surrounding the u.s. stimulus being agreed in the u.s., and i thought maybe there is room for some upside for risk assets. but that is outweighed by more immediate concerns around the virus in europe. what is your take on the balance of those? reporter: i think so. virus has hand, the definitely spooked people. people were talking about a second wave. a lot of people were not talking about a new strain. a new strain spokespeople a little bit. but i think once markets get vaccines may that be still effective against this new st

joining us now from chennai in india is dr soumya swaminathan.peak because of this new variant. have you looked at the details of this new mutation of covid? are you more concerned about its transmissibility? india is one of the countries that has stopped travel with the uk. yes, the who was informed by the scientists from the uk on the 14th of december, through our international health regulations mechanisms, about this new variant, and that the uk scientists were concerned. 0ne and that the uk scientists were concerned. one of the reasons this was discovered of course is that the uk is one of the countries that does a lot of genomic sequencing and has been tracking the viruses across different parts. we realised in the last several weeks that this new strain had become a dominant strain in the uk, particularly in the region around london and the south—east. this is not the first time this has happened to this virus, so we have been tracking the virus, so we have been tracking the virus because all viruses change. it is called mutations, they ch