MOSCOW, December 27. /TASS/. A new British coronavirus strain has not been registered in Russia so far, Deputy Director for Research of the Central Research Institute of Epidemiology of the Russian sanitary watchdog Alexander Gorelov said on Sunday.

"In Russia, 111 laboratories of the Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing are monitoring the virus circulation across the country and can definitely say that at the moment we don’t have an English mutation but if it emerges, it will not spell anything global and terrible," Gorelov said in an interview with Vesti Nedeli program with Dmitry Kiselev on Rossiya-1 TV channel.

On December 14, Britain’s Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock said British scientists had identified a new coronavirus strain that might be to blame for high infection rates in southeastern England. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said according to preliminary findings the new virus strain appeared to be 70% more contagious, but there was no evidence that it was more lethal. Some countries, including Russia, have suspended flights with the UK over concerns about the virus mutation.