While the UK tries to contain the variant first found in South Africa, it is allowed to circulate unchecked elsewhere
The biggest surge-testing operation yet is under way in south London, with all people over the age of 10 who live, work or travel through Wandsworth and Lambeth being urged to take a Covid PCR test on top of twice-weekly rapid testing. The measures are prompted by a cluster of cases of the variant first detected in South Africa, against which several vaccines have shown reduced efficacy. They cast a shadow over the UK’s successful inoculation campaign.
The urgency is sensible. But it stands in striking contrast to the fact that the variant is being allowed to circulate largely unhindered in South Africa itself, and more broadly on the African continent, thanks to low levels of immunisation. Only about 300,000 of the country’s one million health workers have been protected. While the government too has responsibility for the slow pace, it is hard to argue with the warning of the president, Cyril Ramaphosa, that we are watching “vaccine apartheid”. The 700m doses delivered worldwide have overwhelmingly gone to the rich. Low-income countries have received just 0.2% of them.
