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Health officials in the UK have urged Brits to "stay at home" if they feel unwell or display symptoms of Covid-19 .

It comes after a new Covid variant, dubbed 'Stratus', began to circulate in the UK. The new strain, officially known as XFG, was declared a "variant under monitoring" by the World Health Organisation (WHO) on June 25 after it was first reported in January this year.

The XFG variant and its spin-offs now account for 77 per cent of all Covid cases in England, according to the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA). This figure was around 75 per cent the week before.

The UKHSA said in a blog post on Thursday (September 25): "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).

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