About the variant first identified in South Africa
There's currently no evidence that the variant first identified in South Africa causes more severe illness, or that the approved vaccines would not protect against it.
Like the evidence collected from the variant first identified in the UK, there’s some evidence that this variant can spread more easily than the original version of the virus.
Two cases of the variant first discovered in South Africa were identified in the UK on 22 December 2020. In both cases, the people infected had been in direct contact with someone who had travelled from South Africa.
Public Health England’s Health Protection Teams followed up with both cases and traced contacts.
On 23 December the Government introduced strict travel restrictions from South Africa. This will have significantly reduced the risk of the variant spreading from South Africa into the UK.
Laboratory work has begun on the variants in the UK and is routinely undertaken on all variants under investigation or of concern once samples are available.
This data shows that the variant is not currently spreading quickly and is being contained. You can read more about this on GOV.UK.
The infection in Lambeth
It takes a few weeks between a positive test and a random sample being fully sequenced in a lab to identify the Covid-19. The identified infection occurred towards the beginning of January. GOV.UK has the latest data and information of the new variants, including the variant first identified in South Africa.
Surge testing
Surge testing is targeted to the locations where this variant has been detected. The data shows that cases have only been found in a very limited area in low numbers. In this case, the confirmed case of the variant has been found despite there being no travel history to the affected countries or contact with anyone else who has travelled there. Public Health England are also undertaking contact tracing and will test close contacts of confirmed cases of the variant.
The Government is asking local authorities concerned to focus ‘surge testing’ on the variant first discovered in South Africa at this stage, while work is done to consider how this effort would scale up to test for other variants, once they are identified.
To date, there have been no detected cases of the variant first identified in Brazil.