What are the criteria for going on the red list?
The decision is based on Joint Biosecurity Centre risk assessments, which include:
how good a country’s testing structures are, including checking for variants of concern
how many cases those systems have identified
whether people in that country have been catching new variants at home or the cases have come from overseas
evidence of whether that country has exported cases of new variants to other countries, including to the UK
how good the country’s travel links with the UK are
The first point on the list is important, because the genome sequencing needed to identify new variants is very sophisticated and relatively rare.
Covid-19: India red list add may be too late , Prof Mark Walport says
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India s addition to the UK s red list of banned countries due to rising Covid cases and concerns over a new variant may have come too late, the UK s former chief scientific adviser has said.
Prof Mark Walport told the BBC he believed the new variant was more transmissible and there were good reasons for keeping it out of the UK.
Health officials say it is too early to know whether it is more transmissible.
India has been reporting more than 200,000 cases daily since 15 April.
Covid-19: Taskforce for at-home treatments and Scotland to ease lockdown
Published
1. Search begins for at-home treatments
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced an anti-viral taskforce to investigate Covid treatments that could be taken at home, as he warned there will likely be another wave of Covid at some stage this year in the UK. Speaking at a Downing Street press conference, he said anti-viral treatments could be a part of the UK s defence against Covid, as we will have to live with this disease . Also at the briefing, Nikita Kanani, medical director of primary care for NHS England, said uptake of the vaccine among ethnic minority backgrounds had tripled since February, outpacing the national average across all ethnicities.