We must learn to live with variants
The search for an individual thought to be infected with the Brazilian mutation of the coronavirus has triggered a fresh debate over border controls and the effectiveness of the Test and Trace system. Labour has predictably demanded tougher restrictions at the ports while the fact that someone has slipped through the tracking net is taken as evidence of its failure.
But while vigilance against new variants is important, we should also get this into some perspective. In this instance we are talking about just six people thought to have travelled indirectly to the UK from Brazil, one of whom failed properly to fill in a form detailing his or her whereabouts. This made it impossible for the tracking system to identify and isolate the carrier. This lapse may indeed cause infections further down the line but we are talking about a very small group here.
Furthermore, as has become increasingly apparent, the coronavirus mutates. The more cases there are, the more opportunities it has to do so. We could easily find a variant developing within the country – as may have happened with the Kent mutation – which no amount of controls at the border would stop.
This country’s approach keeps being compared unfavourably with that of New Zealand, where the virus has been all but stamped out. But that is because it did not take a grip in the first place. In order to keep its status, moreover, New Zealand has to keep imposing lockdowns every time there is a new case, as has now happened in Auckland.
The fewer cases there are, the less chance the virus has to mutate, which is why the vaccine programme is so important in reducing the numbers with Covid. But as the country prepares to move out of this lockdown phase, “irreversibly” in the words of Boris Johnson, people have to accept that there will be mutations, just as there are every year with flu, which scientists identify, modifying the vaccine accordingly.
We are supposed to be opening up our society over the next few weeks and months, not closing it down further. Those who latch on to any development to preach caution would never have normality return, which it must if thousands of businesses and jobs in the hospitality and travel industries are to be rescued.
Living with the virus means living with its variants as well.