UK races to test, vaccinate as Boris voices concern over B.1.167 variant
LONDON/FRANKFURT: Britain deployed public health officials, supported by the army, to distribute coronavirus tests doorto-door in two northern England towns on Saturday in an effort to contain a fast-spreading variant that threatens plans to lift all lockdown restrictions next month.
Cases of a strain first detected in India have more than doubled in a week, defying a sharp nationwide downward trend in infections won by months of restrictions and a rapid vaccination campaign.
The government’s Scientific Group for Emergencies (SAGE) says the variant detected in India, formally known as B.1.617.2, could be up to 50% more transmissible than one first recorded in southeast England last year that is now the UK’S dominant strain. But they say there is a high level of uncertainty about the exact figure.
“If the virus is significantly more transmissible, we are likely to face some hard choices,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Friday. “I have to level with you that this could be a serious disruption to our progress.”
He said the next stage of lockdown-easing measures would take place as planned on Monday, but warned the variant might delay plans to lift all restrictions, including social distancing and face-covering rules, on June 21.
Johnson said soldiers would help carry out “surge testing” in Bolton and Blackburn in northwest England, where pop-up vaccination sites were also being set up to speed the inoculation drive.
SAGE says there is no evidence so far that the variant causes more severe disease or that existing vaccines won’t work against it. More than twothirds of British adults have received the first dose of a coronavirus vaccine, and 37% have had both doses. The government is shortening the gap between doses for people over 50 from 12 to eight weeks in a bid to give them more protection.
Germany re-classifies UK as risk area over B.1.167
Germany’s health agency on Friday reclassified Britain as a coronavirus “risk area” over concerns about the spread of the variant detected in India, but travellers will still be able to avoid quarantine under updated rules.
The move by Germany’s Robert Koch Institute puts Great Britain and Northern Ireland back in the lowest-level risk category, barely a month after they were taken off the list following a decline in new infections thanks to widespread vaccinations.
US warns extremists may strike as restrictions ease
A national terrorism alert issued in the US on Friday warned that violent extremists may take advantage of the easing of Covid restrictions to conduct attacks.
The alert does not cite any specific threats. But it warns of potential danger from various grievances, racial or ethnic hatred and influences from abroad exacerbated by Covid-19, which spawned conspiracy theories and deepened anger at the government over the shutdown of the economy.
The National Terrorism Advisory System bulletin issued by the Department of Homeland Security is an extension of one issued earlier this year in the wake of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. That alert was due to expire Saturday.