Mr Swarbrick was also curious as to why the virus evolved specifically in Kent, with Prof Towers explaining it was completely by chance and because the UK has sequenced much of COVID-19, it is likely for us to find more variants before other countries. It comes as the South Africa variant also continues to spread across the world as vaccine efficacy falls against it. The UK also recently added a “Bristol” variant to its “cause for concern” list as around 50 cases were found to have an E484K spike protein mutation. The UK vaccination programme creeps closer to its 15 million inoculation target with over 13.5 million people vaccinated so far.