Three days in April that let variant gain foothold in UK

No10’s delay in imposing Indian travel ban may have resulted in the alarming Covid figures we see now

IN THE end it may come down to what happened during three crucial days in April.

As cases of the Indian variant begin to rise in parts of Britain, questions are being raised as to how it was allowed into the country in the first place.

Reports of the spread of a highly new infectious variant of Covid on the Indian subcontinent first emerged early last month.

The Government acted by adding Pakistan and Bangladesh to its red list on April 2. Epidemiologists questioned why India was not included.

Health officials have started to detect an increase in the arrival of Covid cases from India. Public Health England data now show that of the 3,345 people arriving from India between March 25 and April 7, 4.8 per cent tested positive, compared with 0.1 per cent of people in England.

PHE also detected the arrival of three Indian variants around the UK. The most worrying of these, B. 1.617.2, which is spreading most quickly and has claimed at least four lives here so far, was initially detected in tests carried out on travellers arriving from India during the week ending March 29.

According to PHE, at least 122 passengers arriving from Delhi and Mumbai between late March and April 26 were carrying this “variant of concern”.

With India not on the red list, all but a handful of these travellers would have been allowed to leave the airport and travel home and asked to self-isolate.

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson was determined to press ahead with a visit to India on April 25.

But as more and more data from India began to ring alarm bells, he came under pressure to call off the trip.

Downing Street eventually pulled the plug on April 19, on the same day it was decided that India would also be added to the red list – but only from 4am on April 23. This was despite No10 having briefed journalists when the scheme was first unveiled that countries could be added “at a few hours’ notice”.

The result of the three-day delay was inevitable. Demand for flights rocketed as families tried to beat the deadline and avoid having to quarantine in a hotel.

On April 19, Nick Thomas-Symonds, the shadow home secretary, criticised the delay, telling LBC: “It is not good enough to try and shut the door after the horse has bolted, by adding countries on to a red list when it is too late.”

Mr Johnson on Friday defended the delay, saying cases at the time had been higher in Pakistan.

Asked why India was not added to the red list on April 2, along with Bangladesh and Pakistan, Edward Argar, a health minister, told BBC Radio 4’s Today show yesterday that India had a good genome sequence programme and therefore a new variant was not considered such a threat at the time.

But the impact of the delay in implementing the travel ban appears to have been reflected in the numbers of cases.

Between April 4 and May 2, the B. 1.617.2 variant rose from 4.9 per cent of all cases detected among travellers, to 40.9 per cent. The single biggest increase came in the week which included the three and a half days between the afternoon of April 19 and the early morning of April 23.

On Wednesday May 5, a meeting of Sage concluded there had been a “significant recent increase in prevalence of the B. 1.617.2 variant, including some community transmission”. They warned that “early indications ... are that this variant may be more transmissible than the B.1.1.7 [Kent] variant”. Realisation of the growing threat posed by the Indian variant had a dramatic impact on the mood at No10.

Last Monday, Mr Johnson was still in a characteristically confident mood in anticipation of tomorrow’s major easing of lockdown.

‘Not good enough to try to shut the door after the horse bolted, by adding countries to a list when it is too late’

But that same day a meeting of the Government’s Variant Technical Group under the chairmanship of PHE’s national Covid-19 incident director was shown evidence of the alarming spread of B. 1.617.2. Modelling showed the NHS could yet again be overwhelmed.

The meeting concluded: “If B. 1.617.2 does have such a large transmission advantage, it is a realistic possibility that progressing with all roadmap steps would lead to a substantial resurgence of hospitalisations.”

These concerns were relayed to Downing Street and had a marked impact on the Prime Minister’s mood.

On Wednesday May 12, he told the Commons that the Indian variant was now of “increasing concern” and could pose “a potentially lethal danger”.

Over the next 48 hours, the Government decided to “flex” the vaccine rollout so that around 10 million over-50s or in vulnerable categories will now get their second vaccine after eight weeks, rather than 12, and bring surge testing on the ground in Bolton.

On Thursday, Sage suggested a “realistic possibility” that the Indian variant was 50 per cent more transmissible than the one that emerged in Kent.

If B. 1.617.2 establishes itself as the dominant strain in the UK it could threaten all the suffering and sacrifices of the third lockdown and raise the prospect of renewed restrictions.

And that would beg the question of why travellers were allowed those extra three and a half days to come to the UK.