Parts of Surrey to be offered Covid-19 tests as ‘South African variant’ spreads

Door-to-door testing will begin this week

Residents in parts of Surrey are to be offered door-to-door coronavirus tests after the South African variant spread across parts of England. Random testing conducted by Public Health England uncovered positive Covid-19 tests for the South African variant, even among those with no prior travel links to the country. Two people with no travel links to South Africa were found to have caught the country's Covid-19 variant. From this afternoon onwards, residents in the Goldsworth Park and St Johns areas of Woking will be given a PCR swab test. Door-to-door tests will reach Egham by the end of this week, it is believed. According to BBC South East, "Surrey Local Resilience Forum officials said two positive cases of the South African variant were found in residents of Woking who had no links to travel or previous variant cases". https://twitter.com/bbcsoutheast/status/1356215071857369088?s=20 Similar testing will also begin in parts of London, Kent, Hertfordshire and Walsall in the West Midlands. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has previously asserted that vaccines will continue to provide protection against new and emerging strains of coronavirus. He said: "We are confident that all the vaccines that we are using provide a high degree of immunity and protection against all variants. "The fact is we are going to be living with Covid for a while to come in one way or another, I don't think it will be as bad as the last 12 months - or anything like - of course, but it's very, very important that our vaccines continue to develop and to adapt, and they will."