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UK tests house-to-house in hunt for new COVID-19 variant

Published:Tuesday | February 2, 2021 | 2:39 PM
An information board is displayed where distributors were going house-to-house giving resident home testing kits for COVID-19 from Britain's Department of Health in Woking, England, Tuesday, February 2, 2021, during England's third national lockdown since the coronavirus outbreak began. British health authorities plan to test tens of thousands of people in a handful of areas of England, including parts of Woking, in an attempt to stop a new variant of the coronavirus first identified in South Africa spreading in the community. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

LONDON (AP) — England has begun house-by-house COVID-19 testing in some communities as authorities try to snuff out a new variant of the coronavirus before it spreads widely and undermines a nationwide vaccination programme.

Authorities want to reach the 80,000 residents of eight areas where the variant, first identified in South Africa, is known to be spreading because a handful of cases have been detected among people who have had no contact with the country or anyone who travelled there.

Officials are dispatching home testing kits and mobile testing units in an effort to reach every resident of those communities.

It is “critical” for everyone in these areas to stay at home unless travel is absolutely essential, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said.

“Our mission must be to stop its spread altogether and break those chains of transmission,” Hancock told the House of Commons on Tuesday.

Public health officials are concerned about the variant first identified in South Africa because it contains a mutation of the virus’ characteristic spike protein that existing vaccines target.

The mutation may mean the vaccines offer less protection against the variant.

As the door-to-door testing drive got underway, Public Health England also said scientists had discovered the same spike protein mutation in 11 cases involving another variant that is now the most prevalent form of the virus in England.

The mutation had not previously been detected in the so-called Kent variant, named for the English county where it was first identified.

Britain’s government announced in December that the country had to introduce tougher restrictions to control the rapid spread of the Kent variant, which first was discovered a few months earlier in southeast England. 

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