South African strain

[Notagoodtime]

A few weeks ago there seemed to be a lot in the news about the SA strain. There was mass testing to try to stop the spread in some areas. It all seems to have gone quiet now. Can anyone tell me how many cases we have now have as I can’t seem to see the latest info.

There is an article in The Telegraph today which says:

Confirmed cases of the South African variant have risen to 141, according to Public Health England, with 61 probable cases.

Good question OP.

We seem to be fed different information when they want us to behave in new ways.

The information coming out is ever changing and confusing. I don’t believe any of it anymore.

SOuth Africa itself is also looking pretty good with a similar time scale of coming out of the strict lockdown to us.

Its Brazil that is still looking pretty shocking

I assumed they stopped talking about it so much because the government realised it's basically everywhere by now thanks to their slowness with putting hotel quarantine in place and actually checking on those quarantining at home after travel. Plus the sequencing of the tests actually takes so long that by the time they know, the person will have had lots of contact with others.

It was mentioned on the news just yesterday or the day before though, another area was starting mass testing after finding a case - somewhere in Essex.

@Quartz2208

SOuth Africa itself is also looking pretty good with a similar time scale of coming out of the strict lockdown to us.

Its Brazil that is still looking pretty shocking

Yes, I’m still struggling to understand the Brazil situation. Are the severe cases reinfections or new surge? There’s conflicting evidence.

It takes about 2 weeks to get the sequencing results from mass testing, it only finished last weekend here. According to radio 4, Britain has done over 1/2 of all the sequencing worldwide! The American guy admitted that that's why we are picking up mutations quicker

There are various hotspots where they are doing surge testing - Basildon, Essex and Diss, South Norfolk. However, beyond that people aren’t talking about it so much. It seems it isn’t as scary as people thought and the vaccines still seem to be working against it.

We seem to be fed different information when they want us to behave in new ways.

So true.
All the hospital clips they showed in January and talk of the highly infectious Kent strain spreading through schools and communities like wildfire.... now suddenly all is ok again 🤷‍♀️

@PosyWella

We seem to be fed different information when they want us to behave in new ways.

So true.
All the hospital clips they showed in January and talk of the highly infectious Kent strain spreading through schools and communities like wildfire.... now suddenly all is ok again 🤷‍♀️

There are about 4,000 variants around the world.

All is "OK again" because the AZ and Pfizer vaccines work well the Kent variant, the one that is dominant here.

Work is already started on the universal vaccine that we will probably have as a regular booster for a few years.

I read & I can’t remember where, that the SA strain is now not thought to be as transmissions as the Kent strain. More akin to the original strain prior to November. So in that sense, slightly less concerning. I’ll see if I can find the article!

PHE update the data every few days:
mobile.twitter.com/TheGazmanRants/status/1362470088771854341

Data here: www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-variants-genomically-confirmed-case-numbers

Latest update has just been published:
mobile.twitter.com/TheGazmanRants/status/1364224785421508612