Take care

It's dangerous out there - and let's hope our hacks tread safely in the South Africa variant hunt,  cautious in deed and word. Remember 'enhanced' is a government word. Matt Hancock promised "enhanced contact tracing" of cases, but clearly has failed to isolate all those Dido's found. Now he promises "a surge" of " enhanced testing". That means, in English, more testing with the most basic and unreliable swab tests.  

On the doorstep, are you allowed to refuse the blandishments of a firefighter offering you plastic bags and long baby buds ?  Is an unobserved test reliable ?  Should news teams occasionally remind us of the problems of false negatives and false positives in PCR tests ?  Could someone workout the total population of these postcodes ? 

Matt says there are now 105 identified SA cases, with eleven that could not be linked to international travel. Just two weeks ago PHE said there were  35 genomically confirmed and 12 genomically probable cases. Remember in December PHE said 144 lower tier local authorities had identified at least 1 case genomically of the Kent variant; that variant now represents almost all new infections across the UK. 

Then there was scary Callum Semple from SAGE and Nervtag on Today, who suggested that the South African variant may have mutated into existence on its own in the UK. "The mutations can also occur spontaneously".