India variant calls for ‘surge vaccinations’

#  U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson

UK Ministers are under growing pressure to deploy “surge vaccinations” in Covid hotspots, with some local authorities pushing to extend the offer of jabs to over-18s to stop the spread of a coronavirus variant.

U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was anxious about the spread of the variant first detected in India, as cases more than doubled in a week.

Infection cases jumped from 520 to 1,313 in a week, according to Public Health England (PHE), which said it was “actively monitoring the impact of this variant and its severity”.

Data from the Covid-19 genomics UK consortium database revealed that of all the coronavirus genomes sequenced in the past 28 days, more than 8% relate to the India variant of concern.

According to further documents released by PHE, 31.9% of cases of the India variant B.1.617.2 were in London as of 12 May, 25.4% of cases were in the north-west of England and 12.1% of cases were in the east of England. In London 26.5% of cases were among travellers while in the north-west this figure was just 7.5%.

Data in the report also suggests the India variant of concern may be growing faster than the Kent variant (B.1.1.7) which currently dominates in the UK.

While decisions about the priority list for jabs are made by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), U.K. Prime Minister Johnson faced calls from Labour to announce a national response to the surge of the variant.

Jon Ashworth, the shadow health secretary of the UK, said surge vaccination should be considered as part of the method to stem the spread of cases, and pressed the government to move with speed.

Meanwhile in Australia, almost half the Australians due to fly home on the first post-pause repatriation flight out of India have been thrown off the passenger list after they either tested positive to Covid-19 or were deemed close contacts of cases.

The Defence Minister, Peter Dutton, insists the quarantine system will be able to cope when the travel ban lifts and flights from India resume.