How UK tracked down mystery person with Brazilian variant
(Dominic Lipinski/PA)
Tom Pilgrim, PA
A team of 40 people, armed with just a single bar code and limited test data, spent days using “dogged determination” to track down the mystery person infected with the Manaus coronavirus variant.
Data analytic experts and laboratory and logistic resources were drafted in to help identify the individual who tested positive for the variant of concern, with the team narrowing in on them among thousands of potential households.
Three cases of the P1 variant, first identified in the Brazilian city of Manaus, were detected in England on February 26.
A team of 40 people, armed with just a single bar code and limited test data, spent days using "dogged determination" to track down the mystery person in the UK infected with the Manaus coronavirus variant.
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Video report by ITV News Health Editor Emily Morgan
Coronavirus deaths in the UK have fallen by 41% in the last week, the health secretary has said, after the vaccination programme progressed to jabbing two fifths of all adults.
Matt Hancock said the dramatic fall in fatalities shows that vaccines work , and that the link between Covid-19 cases, hospitalisations and deaths is now breaking .
It comes after data published by all four UK nations showed the vaccination scheme had passed the milestone of giving more than a million people both doses of a coronavirus jab.
Mr Hancock said at least 21.3 million people in the UK had received their first dose of a vaccine.