Testing ramped up after ‘Patient X’ with Brazil mutant Covid found in Croydon
The mystery sixth case of a Brazilian coronavirus variant has been identified and tracked down to their home in south London, Matt Hancock has said.
He added that the person appears to have stayed indoors and there was no sign of any onward transmission.
However, surge extra testing will be deployed in Croydon, there they live, as a precautionary measure.
The health secretary told a Downing Street briefing: ‘Using the latest technology and with the dogged determination of our Testing and Tracing scheme, we have successfully identified the person in question.
‘The best evidence is that this person stayed at home and there is no evidence of onward transmission but as a precaution we are putting more testing in in Croydon where they live to minimise the possibility of spread.’
Health authorities launched a frantic search for the mystery person after six cases of the variant of concern, which was first identified in the Brazilian city of Manaus, were detected in the UK – three in England and three in Scotland.
A public appeal was made for one of those people in England to come forward after they took a test in February but left no contact details.
Mr Hancock said the person’s form ‘wasn’t filled in quite right’.
Dr Susan Hopkins, strategic response director at Public Health England, described how ‘an incident team of 40 people from across the system made up of laboratories, logistics, data analytic experts were mobilised to trace the individual’.
She said the search was first focused on two regions comprising 10,000 possible households before being narrowed down to 379 households.
With the help of ‘enhanced contact tracing’, the search was scaled down even further to 27 individuals before the person then came forward.
Mr Hancock was asked about why it took the Test and Trace system, which has been in operation since May last year at a reported cost of £37 billion, a week to locate the individual.
He said: ‘I think it’s an absolute tribute to the team at NHS Test and Trace, Public Health England and all those who have been involved in this search.
‘Despite the fact that this case was one of the very, very few where the correct details were not attached to the test itself, which happens in 99.9% of cases, they managed to track down this individual.
‘I think it’s reassuring that all the evidence shows that that individual – and all six [cases] where we found this variant of concern – followed the rules and we obviously then put in the testing around that.’
The health secretary added: ‘We wouldn’t know anything about this without the huge testing capacity and the sequencing capacity.’
The P1 variant, which was also detected in travellers from Brazil to Japan, was associated with a surge of cases in Manaus late last year.
It is among a total of four variants of concern being tracked by scientists in the UK.
A study this week suggested that between 25% and 61% of people in Manaus who had previously had Covid-19 were susceptible to reinfection with the concerning P1 variant.
The variant carries a mutation in the spike protein called E484K, raising concerns that vaccines may not be as effective against it.
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