Fears over vaccine effectiveness as testing for South African variant starts in Walsall
Fears have been raised about the effectiveness of vaccines against the South African variant of coronavirus which has been revealed to have been in the Black Country for more than six weeks.
Two new mobile testing sites were set up in Walsall on Tuesday after someone in the WS2 area tested positive for the more contagious variant.
It is one of 11 cases of the variant in the UK that have no known links to travel or previous cases - prompting concerns that the variant is spreading among communities just as infection rates had started to fall.
The sites, at Forest Arts Centre and Walsall College, are for people with no symptoms who live or work in the WS2 area.
And by Thursday officials will start knocking on doors in an attempt to test 10,300 people in the WS2 area.
Councillor Stephen Craddock, portfolio holder for health and wellbeing in Walsall, said the person who tested positive for the variant initially tested positive on December 19.
He said they were contacted and told to self isolate and their partner and work colleagues were all tested and none came back positive.
Between five and 10 per cent of positive coronavirus tests are usually sent off to see which variant caused the virus, and in December health officials were focusing on the variant originating from the South East of England when this one came back as the South African variant, Councillor Craddock added.
He said: "We know that in South Africa it has become the dominant strain, there's not enough known about it but the fact that it's become the dominant strain would indicate it's more transmissible.
"We think it's more transmissible, we don't have evidence that it's more potent, we don't expect mortality rates to increase.
Results
"We are concerned about the effectiveness of the vaccine because they haven't been fully tried and tested with the South African variant, although there is confidence that it will have a degree of effectiveness.
"A lot of the residents will have been vaccinated already and it would be very interesting to see if they have got Covid. I know the vaccine prevents hospitalisation, people tend to be a lot less ill."
The aim is for the results of these PCR tests to be returned within 48 hours and if positive, a result on which strain to be known in seven days, Councillor Craddock said.
He added: "This is what they call Operation Eagle. People who live in WS2, if you can go and get yourself tested, we will also be doing door to door and asking people to do a test if they haven't been to the testing sites. If they haven't, they will be given a test and then we'll come back and take it off to be analysed.
"These are PCRs, not lateral flow tests.
"All of them will go away and be tested and prioritised, we're expecting the results within 48 hours, if somebody has tested positive and test and trace kick into operation, they must isolate and they will look at other contacts.
"Only the tests which come back positive will be looked at further to see which variant they've got.
"It normally takes four to six weeks, we are prioritising these, they will be done in seven days.
"We've contacted businesses, schools, other organisations, churches that have regular visitors from outside the area.
"It's a targeted campaign, it's likely to go on for two to three weeks until we've captured most of the information and my guess is it will be required somewhere else."
"My phone was red hot on Thursday, all of this has been put in place in less than a week," he added.
"We're going at it as hard as we possibly can.
"It hit us on Thursday, we had one working day then the public were told on Monday. Over the weekend we were planning a strategy.
"We didn't want to create panic and people shouldn't be fearful."
The two new mobile testing centres are planned to be in use from 10am to 3pm daily.
