EU leaders have expressed grave concern over the emergence of new variants of the coronavirus and their potential impact on the pandemic in Europe.
Following a video conference of all 27 leaders, member states have agreed to intensify antigen testing and genomic sequencing in order to get a deeper understanding of the new variants and their prevalence across the EU.
The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said the situation was very serious, although an acceleration of vaccine roll outs in the next number of weeks offered hope.
The concern is that the UK, Brazilian and South African variants are so transmissible that they will require much tougher lockdowns.