Two cases of the new strain of COVID-19 that was first detected in the United Kingdom have been identified in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo, leading authorities on Thursday to call for stepped up measures to curb the spread.

"It is not a cause for panic. This strain does not come with more serious forms of the disease, but it does come with greater power to cause infection," the Secretary of Health for the state of Sao Paulo, Jean Gorynchtein, said in a televised broadcast.

The new variant was detected by private diagnostic laboratory Dasa, which then informed the state's Adolfo Lutz Institute and the Secretariat of Health Monitoring for further analysis.