Coronavirus: UK vaccinates over 20 million; detects Manaus variant first found in Brazil
- Two of three cases found in England were from a household that had a history of travel to Brazil. The third case has yet to be identified
- Prime Minister Boris Johnson called the rapid Covid-19 vaccine roll-out a ‘huge national achievement’
Up to six cases of a highly transmissible variant of coronavirus first identified in the Brazilian city of Manaus have been detected in Britain for the first time, English health officials said on Sunday.
Three cases were found in England and another three in Scotland.
Two of three cases found in England were from a household in the South Gloucestershire area that had a history of travel to Brazil. A third, currently unlinked, case has yet to be identified, Public Health England said.
The risk to the wider community from the Gloucestershire cases was considered low but as a precaution officials were moving quickly to deploy testing and increasing the sequencing of positive coronavirus samples from the area, PHE said. The Scottish cases were not linked to the ones in England.
The P. 1 variant detected in Manaus shares some mutations with a variant first identified in South Africa and it is possible that it might respond less well to current vaccines, PHE said.
Susan Hopkins, PHE’s strategic response director for Covid-19, said Britain’s advanced gene sequencing capabilities meant it was finding more variants and mutations than many other countries.