Surge testing in north-west London to combat spread of South African variant of Covid-19

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) mentioned on Thursday that extra testing and genomic sequencing shall be rolled out in the North Wembley space of Brent in the capital, in addition to the TS19 postcode space in Stockton-on-Tees, in County Durham, as half of efforts to suppress the spread of the variant.

The division mentioned: “The elevated testing is being launched in addition to current intensive testing and, in mixture with the general public following present lockdown guidelines and Hands Face Space recommendation, will assist to monitor and suppress the spread of the virus.

“Positive instances shall be sequenced for genomic information to assist improve our understanding of Covid-19 variants and their spread inside these areas.

“Enhanced contact tracing shall be used for people testing optimistic with a variant of concern. This is the place contact tracers look again over an prolonged interval in order to decide the route of transmission.”

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People dwelling inside the focused areas are “strongly inspired” to take a Covid-19 take a look at when supplied, whether or not they’re exhibiting signs or not.

The announcement covers the newest deployment of surge testing in England in a bid to management and suppress the potential spread of coronavirus variants.

On Monday, surge testing started in south Gloucestershire after instances of the Manaus variant of coronavirus – a brand new pressure which will spread extra quickly and should reply much less nicely to current vaccines – have been found.

The newest extra testing information comes as official Test and Trace figures revealed {that a} complete of 68,738 folks examined optimistic for Covid-19 in England no less than as soon as in the week to February 24.

This is down 19 per cent on the earlier week and is the bottom quantity because the week to September 30.

Of the 69,129 folks transferred to the Test and Trace system in the week to February 24, 88.5 per cent have been reached and requested to present particulars of latest shut contacts.

This is down very barely from 88.7 per cent in the earlier week.

Some 11.1 per cent of folks transferred to Test and Trace in the week to February 24 weren’t reached whereas an additional 0.5 per cent didn’t present any communication particulars.

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