Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what urgent steps the Government is taking to help prevent transmission of the South African variant of covid-19 from continental Europe.

The Joint Biosecurity Centre (JBC) produces risk assessments on the spread of variants of concern internationally to inform Ministerial decisions on borders policy. These risk assessments cover a range of factors for each country including assessment of surveillance and sequencing capability, available surveillance and genome sequencing data, evidence of in-country community transmission of COVID-19 variants, evidence of exportation of new variants to the United Kingdom or other countries and travel connectivity with the UK.

Decisions to ‘red list’ countries are taken by Ministers, informed by evidence including the JBC’s analysis as well as other relevant information about the risk of the spread of variant. Working in partnership with local authorities, enhanced testing and sequencing has been and will be targeted towards areas and communities assessed to potentially be at risk. Positive tests will be sequenced to identify any further spread of the COVID-19 variant first found in South Africa.