As of January 4, Marek Kraj I, Slovakia’s health minister, confirmed on social media that medical experts had first discovered the Novel Coronavirusb.1.1.7 mutant, which started in England, in Michalovce in the east of the country, although he did not disclose the number of cases of the mutant strain.

Krajic said it was likely that the mutant strain had appeared in Slovakia in late December. There was a lot of travel between Slovakia and Britain during the traditional Western holidays.

According to the requirements of the Slovak epidemic prevention regulations, from 0:00 on 21 December 2020, passengers travelling from the UK to Slovakia must be quarantined upon arrival and undergo RT-PCR testing on the fifth day after entry, and only those who have a negative result can end the quarantine.

The alarm was first raised in the UK on December 8, Science.com reported. At a routine meeting on the spread of the pandemic coronavirus in the UK, scientists and public health experts were presented with a startling chart.

The phylogenetic tree of the virus in Kent, a county in southeast England that has seen a surge in cases, also looks odd, said Nick Loman, a microbial genomics scientist at the University of Birmingham. Half of the cases are caused by a specific variant of SARS-CoV-2, and that variant is located on a branch of the phylogenetic tree that extends from other parts of the tree. Lohman says he has never seen a viral phylogenetic tree like this.