COVID-19 in UK: Officials hunt for ‘missing’ person carrying Brazilian strain as experts sound alarm – World News , NewsGater

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London: Britain called on Monday that a person infected with a powerful COVID-19 strain from Brazil to come forward as experts worried about its impact on new vaccines.

The public appeal came a week before England began undoing its third COVID lockdown, and progress hinges on the ability of vaccines to reduce the pandemic.

The variant that emerged in Manaus, northern Brazil, has been detected in six people in the UK, one of whom cannot be located after they did not fill in their contact details on a form after taking their coronavirus proof.

“We are working with various data points to try to locate them, and not least, of course, to try to single out anyone who took a test on 12 (February) to come forward if they haven’t had a result,” said the Minister of Vaccines. Nadhim Zahawi said BBC TV.

He said community-wide “augmentation tests” were beginning in South Gloucestershire, in the west of England, after two of the Manaus cases were confirmed there.

Experts cautioned that, based on data from Brazil, the variant was more transmissible and better at evading antibodies than the predominant UK strain that emerged in Kent County in the south-east of the country last September.

Danny Altmann, a professor of immunology at Imperial College London, said the public should be “somewhat concerned, but not utterly panicked” by the appearance in Britain of the Manaus variant.

“It’s not that all immunity is gone, it’s that vaccines look much less potent, so there will be more people who have low antibody responses where they can penetrate and be affected,” he said. Times Radio. “Everything becomes much more difficult.”
In mid-January, Britain banned flights from South America, including Brazil.

But the new cases arrived on a flight from Sao Paulo via Zurich around February 10, prompting complaints from opposition parties about loopholes in the border protection regime.

Britain has the highest death toll in Europe from the Covid pandemic. On Sunday, the government said it had given more than 20 million people at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, offering some hope that the end is in sight, unless new strains are established.

Next Monday, schools across England are to reopen to pupils for classroom teaching as part of a staggered return to normalcy in the coming months.