RED CELLS R US

Over 2000 pints of donated blood arrive at this London blood manufacturing site every day.

Then it's a race against time to process each pack within 27 hours to maintain quality.

went behind the scenes to show you exactly how it's done

Give Blood NHS Blood Donation and help save a life ❣️

BBC News - Covid cases rising with new variants Nimbus and Stratus

As we enter autumn, rates of respiratory illnesses start to rise and people ask how the most common current  lineages  -  or groups of genetically similar viruses  -  compare to previous COVID-19 variants.  

What have we seen so far? 

The most common current variants are the XFG and NB.1.8.1 (sometimes referred to in the media as the Stratus and Nimbus variants).  Our genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 lineages last month found that 35% were classified as XFG.3, 28% were classified as XFG, 11% were classified as NB.1.8.1, 7% were classified as XFG.5 and 7% were classified as XFG.3.4.1. You can see our latest data on the National flu and COVID-19 surveillance reports.