British health officials will start door-to-door testing of tens of thousands of people in parts of England where the South African variant of coronavirus has been found. More than 80,000 people in eight parts of England will be targeted for testing after at least 11 people who have no history of international travel tested positive for the variant.
More than 100 cases of the highly infectious B.1.351 variant have been found in Britain since December 22nd but most of those reported were connected to South Africa. Identifying neighbourhoods across Surrey, London, Kent, Hertfordshire, Southport and Walsall where people are being asked to take tests, health secretary Matt Hancock said the government would "come down hard" on the variant.
“It is imperative that you stay at home, and that you get a test, even if you don’t have symptoms,” he told residents of the affected areas. “This is so important so that we can break the chains of the transmission of this new variant, and we’ve got to bring this virus to heel.”
Mr Hancock was speaking at a Downing Street press conference alongside Public Health England's (PHE) Susan Hopkins, who said three vaccines used to date in trials had shown they were effective against the South African variant.
‘Dangerous strains’
Labour’s shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds described the news about the community spread of the South African variant as deeply worrying, adding that the government must act now to introduce tougher border controls.
“It shows the UK government’s quarantine system is not working with the country being exposed to dangerous strains of the virus and new cases now appearing,” he said.
“While door-to-door testing is welcome in areas where cases of the South African variant with no links to travel have been identified, how can the home secretary justify keeping our borders open to Covid, allowing around 21,000 people to arrive every day?”
Britain confirmed on Monday that it had ordered a further 40 million doses of a coronavirus vaccine candidate from Valneva, which has yet to be approved by regulators. By the start of this week, nine out of 10 of all those over 80 and half of those over 70 had received the first dose of a vaccine under Britain's vaccination programme, the fastest in Europe.
‘No-regrets attitude’
“We’ve invested early and at risk, before we know for sure it will come good. Because from the start, we have taken a no-regrets attitude to backing vaccines,” Mr Hancock said.
He said "constructive progress" had been made in talks with the European Union to ensure supplies to Britain of vaccines manufactured in Europe would not be interrupted despite the European Commission's threat to impose export controls.
"We have a high degree of confidence in the supplies that we have contracted from Pfizer and AstraZeneca, and we're working with our European partners to make sure those supply chains can remain open. And in the same way that there are some of the supplies made on the continent, so too a huge amount of it is made onshore here in the UK," he said.
