This is the story of the Delta variant, of how it came to
the UK, of how it delayed Boris Johnson's Covid plans.
- I cannot say that we have met all our four tests for proceeding with
step four on June 21st. I think it is sensible to wait just a little longer.
- Let's go back to the start. In October,
a new variant was detected in India. Six months on, in April, India's cases
were surging and several mutations of the variant were causing concern.
One was called B.1.617.2. This was Delta.
It was gaining international attention.
The World Health Organization designated it a variant of
interest on 4th April. On 9th April,
Boris Johnson's government expanded its red list of countries,
the ones facing the strictest travel restrictions.
Here's the press release: The Philippines, Pakistan,
Kenya and Bangladesh to be added to England's red list,
we were told. It went on: 'The additional restrictions will help
to reduce the risk of new variants
such as those first identified in South Africa and Brazil, entering
England.' The Delta variant was not mentioned nor was India.
Which begs the question, why? Well, one possible explanation
was politics - that Boris Johnson had a trip to India
in late April that he did not want to cancel.
Weeks later, the Sunday Times reported: 'It is alleged that Boris
Johnson wanted to keep relations with India smooth before key
post-Brexit trade talks.' The theory goes the trip would have helped.
The government's never accepted that but pressure to cancel was building.
One leading public health academic said India being off the red list
was 'frankly insane'. And we got more detail on the government's
thinking when Health Secretary Matt Hancock said this in May:
- When we put Pakistan on the red list and indeed Bangladesh
the positivity of those arriving from Pakistan and Bangladesh was
three times higher that from India. That's why we took those decisions.
- But publicly available government data does not back that up.
These are the Covid infection rates for arrivals in late March and early April,
India is above Bangladesh and close to Pakistan. Mr Hancock
has also argued that the government did not have the full picture.
- We didn't have that data because there is a long lag from the cases,
the date on which the case occurs, to the date when the sequencing
result comes back. So you have to act on the data that you have.
- His argument there is about sequencing, which identifies individual variants.
But even without that information
the headline data from India needed little interpretation. By mid-April,
even after factoring in population size, India was recording far more
new cases a day than Bangladesh or Pakistan. Though the UK government
says that was in part because India was testing more.
What the UK definitely knew was that India had outbreaks of what were then
called the Kent, South Africa and Brazil variants, and Covid in India
was a huge and rapidly escalating crisis. And within days, the government
had changed tack. This press release on 19th April announced
India was being added to the red list from the 23rd. It noted:
'There is a high volume of travel between India and the UK.' Certainly
there was a high volume in April. The Sunday Times estimates that 20,000 people
arrived in the UK from India in the first three weeks of the month.
Again, though, this week, Boris Johnson has defended his government.
- We put India on the red list, Mr Speaker, on April 23rd
and the Delta variant was not identified until April 28th.
- This is all true, but it is also true that the role
of variants in the India crisis was known earlier in April and
that people in mid-April were urging the prime minister to act
and, whatever the rights and wrongs of the government's decision here,
Boris Johnson was following a pattern. At the start of the pandemic,
he locked down England later than many European countries.
In the autumn, he locked down later than his scientific advisers suggested.
In December, he resisted calls for more restrictions at Christmas,
then changed his mind. And again here, he acted later than he
might have. The question is, what was the impact of doing that?
By mid-May the opposition was making these accusations.
- They should have put India on the red list at the same time as Pakistan
and as Bangladesh. Since then we've had this three-week period in which
thousands of people have returned from India and that probably includes
hundreds of new variant Covid cases.
- But does this add up? Can April's decisions be connected with what's happening now?
Well, Delta does account for more than 90% of
new cases in England. This is one former government adviser.
- We are in the grip of the early stages of a third wave of the virus and it is this Delta variant.
We've got 7,000 cases on average a day at the moment and
a doubling time which is somewhere around a week.
- And then this is a current UK government adviser on whether the
red list decision mattered.
- This India Delta variant is now quite common around the globe.
So it would have ended up in the United Kingdom at some point.
But perhaps it would have been delayed and
it's really the competition between the between the virus and the vaccine.
So had the variant arrived in the country when we'd had more people vaccinated
then it may well not have grown in the same way that it has.
- In other words, to some extent, timing did matter.
But it's not the whole story. Look at these dates.
The UAE brought in extra restrictions on travel from India on 22nd April
France was the 24th,
the US 4th May. And remember the UK was 23rd April.
It wasn't out of sync with these countries.
More broadly, the WHO says Delta is in over 60 countries.
So why is the UK particularly affected?
This is helpful from Dr Jeffrey Barrett, a leading geneticist.
He is quoted in the Independent and says: 'If you get one introduction,
even of a transmissible variant, there is a decent chance
it fizzles out and doesn't create a big outbreak.
If you get 100, 500 or 1,000 introductions,
it's very hard to avoid that some of them will go on to seed big outbreaks.'
All of which feeds into the ongoing arguments over the
timing of the red list decision. Arguments that have an urgency,
because Delta's becoming more and more of an issue and the
message from scientists is it won't be the only one.
- There's no question that when we have this
conversation in six months' time
we'll be talking about different variants.
- And how governments manage variants will have a huge bearing on how much Covid disrupts our lives.
We've seen that with Delta. It would have reached the UK anyway.
But decisions in April do help to explain why England's
Covid restrictions will not be eased on June 21st.