Samples from British cases tested at chemical war lab

PUBLIC health officials were last night in a race to track down anyone who has been in contact with Britain’s first confirmed cases of the Omicron variant.

The two individuals, one from Nottingham and the other from Brentwood, Essex, are understood to have become infected in southern Africa, where the strain was first identified.

Health officials said ‘all members of their households are being tested and told to selfisolate’, and that wider contact tracing was also under way. The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), which took over the Covid protection role from Public Health England in October, has so far provided no details about when and where the two arrived back in the UK.

The two cases are ‘linked’ but officials would not say whether this meant that they were on a trip abroad together, were sat close to each other on a plane or were associated in some other way. Samples of the virus taken from the pair have been sent to the agency’s top security Porton Down site. Separately, other samples are being flown in bio-secure vials from South Africa.

Vaccine experts from the Oxford-AstraZeneca team and Pfizer have also been given access to the samples to fast-track their assessment of whether Omicron can side-step the protection afforded by current vaccines.