UK boosts testing in areas with new variant

Surge strategy underway in eight places where the virulent strain has been detected

The British government will begin instant doorstep testing in areas where a particularly virulent strain of the novel coronavirus is thought to be multiplying, in a bid to better understand the problem.

The instant tests, along with additional home-testing, and mobile testing stations, will be used in eight areas where a strain of the virus that was first identified in South Africa has been found.

The variant appears to be more easily caught than the main strain of the novel coronavirus but not to be more deadly.

Michelle Donelan, the United Kingdom's minister of state for universities, said on the BBC's Breakfast news program that people in areas where the variant has been identified should stay at home as much as possible.

Matt Hancock, the UK's health secretary, said the government aims to test 80,000 people in parts of the county of Kent, parts of North London, South London, and West London, and in the communities of Walsall, Woking, Broxbourne, and Southport.

Hancock said the government is intent on "finding every case "and ensuring the variant cannot continue to spread.

As of Tuesday morning, 105 cases of the variant had been identified.

Calum Semple, a professor and member of the government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, which is known as Sage, said on Radio 4's Today program that, while the movement of people must be restricted to contain the spread of the new strain, the idea of closing the UK's borders completely was impractical.

"You can't do it altogether when you have got a country that is dependent on imports for food and other essential processes," he said. "It is just not possible."

However, Andrew Hayward, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at University College London and a fellow member of Sage, said on Sky News that, without closing borders completely, the likelihood of new variants arriving in the UK was "probably, in the long term, 100 percent".

"The nature of this virus is that it will continue to mutate, as do all viruses, and new strains will emerge and they'll emerge in many different countries in the world at different times, and you won't notice that they are spreading until such time as they are quite widespread," he said.

In the meantime, the UK is continuing to vaccinate people as quickly as possible, with more than 9.2 million people now having had an initial dose of a vaccine.

All three vaccines approved for use in the UK so far-from Pfizer/BioNTech, Oxford University/AstraZeneca, and Moderna-are believed to be effective against both the main strain of the virus and mutations identified so far.

With more infectious strains of the virus making more people ill but the UK's vaccination program beginning to off set that, it will likely be some time before it is clear whether the battle against the virus is being won.

However, the Office for National Statistics said on Tuesday in its weekly breakdown that there were more than 40 percent excess deaths in England and Wales in mid-January.

The ONS said the week ending Jan 22 had 8,422 deaths in which COVID-19 was mentioned, and that such deaths made up the largest proportion of total deaths since the pandemic began.

Meanwhile, as the day-to-day battle against the virus continues, The Telegraph reports that long-term challenges created by the pandemic will be with the nation's young people for years to come.

The paper reports that the generation of people coming of age during the pandemic will carry emotional and financial scars deep into their lives, with dented employment prospects, higher levels of debt than their predecessors, and difficulty in finding affordable housing.

The paper notes that youth unemployment rates will be high for at least another four years, according to the Resolution Foundation think tank, which says 17 percent of people aged 18 to 29 will be without work until at least 2025.