© 2020 – 2023 AEA3 WEB | AEAƎ United Kingdom News
AEA3 WEB | AEAƎ United Kingdom News
News

UK Covid live news: Brazil variant may make foreign summer holidays impossible, ministers warned

Latest updates: UK officials face urgent calls for tougher border measures as the search continues for one of six people infected with Brazilian variant

  • Alarm over delays in border measures as Brazil Covid variant hits UK
  • Coronavirus – latest updates
  • See all our coronavirus coverage

Dr Deepti Gurdasani, an epidemiologist at Queen Mary University of London, told BBC Breakfast this morning that the discovery of the P1 Brazil variant in England highlighted the “failures in quarantine policy”. She said:

Sage has advised that, unless we had a comprehensive, managed quarantine policy at our borders, something like this would happen. But unfortunately it’s something that we’ve been quite complacent about; now we’re just seeing the consequences of that.

Measures to reduce importations are most important when domestic prevalence (either overall or of particular variants of concern) is low and when importation could result in R>1. 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 (moderate confidence, moderate evidence) …

Reactive, geographically targeted travel bans cannot be relied upon to stop importation of new variants, due to the lag between the emergence and identification of variants of concern, as well as the potential for indirect travel via a third country (moderate confidence, moderate evidence).

On its website South Gloucestershire council has given details of where surge testing is taking place in response to the discovery of two cases of the P1 Brazil variant in the borough. Here are the postcode sectors where people are being asked to get tested:

BS32 0
BS32 8
BS32 9
BS34 5
BS34 6

Continue reading…

Related posts

Labour celebrates ‘seismic’ Scottish byelection win – UK politics live

AEA3

England v Australia: Ashes fifth Test, day three – live

AEA3

‘A horrible winter lies ahead’: next PM will inherit an NHS on its knees

AEA3

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This