Covid: What is the government doing about the South Africa variant?

The health authorities in South Africa announced on 18 December that a new variant of Covid 19 had been identified and was driving a second wave of infections in the country.

The strain - called B.1.351 - carries one of the same mutations as the variant first seen in Kent, which makes it easier to spread.

On 23 December, the government announced that it had detected two cases of the South African strain in the UK.

On 8 February, it said this number had grown to 147 cases.

On 24 December, a travel ban was imposed on South Africa. On 9 January, this was extended to nine other southern African countries.

UK residents and Irish nationals were exempted from this ban but were required to self-isolate for 10 days at home. They were allowed to use public transport to travel from the airport to their home or place of quarantine.

We asked the government how many people had come to the UK from South Africa - via third countries - since 24 December.

We were told it does not publish this information. The Office for National Statistics does not collect figures for indirect flights either.

Some countries, such as the US, have also banned entry to non-residents who have been in South Africa recently, while several others such as Australia have long-standing bans on almost any non-residents entering their countries.

The UK government's "red list" of countries from which you are banned from flying to the UK has grown to over 30 and includes South America (where another strain of coronavirus has been identified).

Again, there's an exemption for UK and Irish nationals.

From 15 February, anyone arriving in the UK from one of the red list countries will have to quarantine in a government-allocated hotel for 10 days and take two tests, for which they will have to pay £1,750.

Anyone arriving in the UK from a country not on the red list will still have to quarantine at home for 10 days, and will need to get tests on day two and day eight.

There will be tougher enforcement of the rules and all tests on people arriving in the UK will be sequenced to see if they have the new variants.

There has been concern that some countries that have found cases of the new strain - the US and France, for example - are not on the red list.

Matt Hancock told Parliament that "we keep the red list of countries under review".

He said the government had to make judgments about which countries to put on it, including whether the new variants were the "dominant strain" in a particular country and how much genomic sequencing was being carried out there to find the mutations.

Ravi Gupta, professor of microbiology at the University of Cambridge, believes an overall ban on non-residents coming to the UK would be better.

"The trouble with red lists is that we usually get the wrong countries, infected people come in by other routes and lists discourage countries trying to find new variants," he said.

But he stressed that travel restrictions had to be a short-term strategy while encouraging manufacturers to make their vaccines better able to deal with the mutations.

Sage is the scientific advisory group, which helps inform the government's decisions.

On 22 December it raised "theoretical" concerns about the South Africa variant.

At its meeting on 7 January, Sage said that cases of the new South African variant continued to be found despite the imposition of travel restrictions two weeks earlier. It added that there were two potential cases which did not seem to be linked to travel.

Then at its meeting on 21 January, Sage said: "No intervention, other than a complete, pre-emptive closure of borders, or the mandatory quarantine of all visitors upon arrival in designated facilities, irrespective of testing history, can get close to fully preventing the importation of cases or new variants."

It also said that banning travellers from particular areas when new variants are found won't do the trick because it takes too long to identify the variants, there are relatively few countries carrying out the genome sequencing required to identify them, and people can come in via third countries.

Mr Hancock told the Andrew Marr Show on 24 January that there were 77 known cases of the South African variant in the UK, and they had been under "very close observation".

He added that the majority of those could be traced back to contact with South Africa.

We asked the Department of Health and Social Care what "very close observation" involved but have not yet had a response.

Normal testing does not identify which variant of the virus a patient has - that can only be done by genome sequencing, which is currently carried out on between 5% and 7% of positive cases in the UK, and takes about three weeks.

That means it may have spread by the time it has been identified. It also means that there may be considerably more cases in the country that have not been detected.

A study in South Africa has suggested that the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine offered "minimal protection" against mild and moderate cases of the country's new Covid-19 variant. The South African government has suspended its rollout of the vaccine.

Prof Sarah Gilbert, the lead Oxford vaccine developer, said "we're going to need to keep a really close eye on the spread of the South African variant in the UK" but added that vaccines would still "offer protection against deaths, hospitalisations and severe disease".

She said developers were likely to have a modified jab to combat the variant by autumn.

On-the-spot doorstep tests, home testing kits and mobile testing units are being deployed in a number of areas where new variants have been found.

Adults will be encouraged to take tests whether or not they are experiencing symptoms.

The areas involved include parts of Kent, Woking, Southport and Broxbourne, as well as parts of south, west and north London.

Other areas in Worcestershire, Sefton, Bristol and South Gloucestershire have been added.

Prof Lawrence Young from Warwick Medical School said he was sceptical about surge testing. "I'm not sure how it's going to contain infection given the time frame - it's likely to have already spread once it's been found," he said.

On 2 February, Mr Hancock told BBC Breakfast that people living in areas where the new variant had been identified should be taking even greater steps to avoid social contact. He said people should not go to the shops, if they had food in the house.

But this advice was not backed up with tougher restrictions.

"We're in a national lockdown, so there is not a stronger law we can bring in place that says: 'Really stay at home'," he told Breakfast.

While the country is in lockdown there are some aspects of it that are less severe than in the first lockdown.

For example, support bubbles and childcare bubbles are both allowed this time round and playgrounds, garden centres and estate agents are open.

There is also evidence that people have been going out more, with data from the Department for Transport showing that trains, buses, the Tube in London and cars are all being used more now than during the first lockdown.

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