[nffc]

There is little evidence for anything yet in regards to this new variant - and there are ultimately going to be more and more detections of it, but this is because they are looking for it, this is why they have told everyone who has come back from the affected areas and anyone who is coming back from them to isolate and book a PCR test.



At the moment all detections are people who have been to Africa, mainly southern Africa, and people who have recently returned from there. We will probably also see a bit of transmission in their close contacts especially households and they should be isolating and tested too. I would also probably suggest that anyone who has been outside the UK in the last week should also take a LFT daily if they're going to go anywhere and avoid non-essential journeys especially those to crowded spaces.


That should be enough to slow it down for now.


There's also been some conversation out of SA which suggests it is milder, though I suppose it's early days on this as we won't know even there until it's a couple of weeks in as hospital admissions tend to lag getting the virus by a week or so.


But they shouldn't really be looking to impose anything more on the general population until we know that it is causing an issue with vaccinated people. If it's starting to significantly infect double or triple jabbed people to the extent that they will be in hospital with the virus, then they will need to try and slow that down in the community.