Brazil Covid variant in at least 15 countries not on UK’s red list, warns WHO

BRITAIN-HEALTH-VIRUS-QUARANTINE-TRAVEL
The government has tightened up on those arriving in the UK with it’s red list but some experts have warned it may not be working.
AFP/Getty
John Dunne @jhdunne2 March 2021

A coronavirus variant first identified  Brazil has been found in at least 15 countries that are not on the government’s red list, the World Health Organisation has revealed.

The red list includes countries from which all travel to the UK is banned except for residents who must enter hotel quarantine for 10 days.

Six cases of the P1 variant, which originated in Manaus on the Amazon river in Brazil, have been identified in the UK.

Three in England and three in Scotland and experts say the existing covid vaccines may not be as effective against it.

Five people with the variant are isolating, but the hunt is on to find the sixth person.

Health secretary, Matt Hancock, told Monday’s Downing Street briefing it was possible that person took a test during a local authority surge – house-to-house testing aimed at detecting the variant that originated in South Africa and is similar to P1.

Residents arriving from red-listed Brazil or South Africa would face quarantine in a hotel, while non-residents cannot travel to England at all. In Scotland, all international arrivals are quarantined.

The three Scottish cases are residents who flew to Aberdeen from Brazil via Paris and London, according to the Scottish government.

In a tally by the World Health Organization, P1 has been found in 15 countries that are not on the UK red list.

These include Canada and the United States, France, Germany, Spain, Japan, Mexico, India, Italy and the Republic of Korea. Cases have also been detected in six more countries including Ireland and Switzerland, but these are not yet verified, the WHO says.

The WHO report said there were further reports of the variant being found in other countries it was still working on verifying, including China, Croatia, Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey.

Hancock said at the briefing that the proportion of cases that were identified as caused by the P1 variant in those countries was “exceptionally low”. The red-listed countries were those where variants were dominant or found in substantial numbers.

But some experts are concerned that the red list may not be adequate to check the flow of variants into the UK and have called for changes to the system.

Dr Julian Tang, a virologist and University of Leicester honorary associate professor, said the government’s red list “could go out of date at any time” because of the time it takes to sequence coronavirus cases.

He told the Guardian: “We saw that Ireland reported three cases of the P1 Brazilian variant about 10 days ago,” he told the Guardian. “It was not surprising to see other imported cases in the UK mainland soon afterwards – and these cases may have already created others here.”

He added: “Restricting international travel from red-listed countries may slow down the introduction of new variants from elsewhere, but eventually, such variants will likely spread to non-red-listed countries from red-listed countries – then to the UK from there – if different countries have different red lists.”

Nick Thomas-Symonds, Labour’s shadow home secretary, said the number of countries where variants including the Brazil and South African ones have been discovered that still do not feature on the red list was “significant”.

He added: “UK government action is consistently too little, too late,” he said. “What is needed is a comprehensive hotel quarantine system without delay.”

Prof Lawrence Young, a virologist at Warwick Medical School, said he feared “we might be adding insult to injury by bringing in variants from overseas” that would compound the difficulty of suppressing domestic variants which spring up in the UK.

He warned that while “stringent controls” are in place with the 33 red list countries, that is unlikely to be enough.

“Either you do it all or not it at all,” he said. “Many of us have been concerned all the way through about border control, because we knew during the first and second wave from sequencing the genome that most of the introductions into the UK were from people travelling back from mainland Europe.”

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in