Case of the Indian variant of Covid-19 has been identified in West Berkshire

ONE case of the Indian variant of Covid-19 has been identified in West Berkshire.

Matt Pearce, service director - communities and wellbeing at the district council, said that no further cases, however, had been identified through sequencing of PCR test results in the past two weeks.

He added that most cases seemed to be travel-related and that the council was not seeing any community transmission, with the dominant strain in the district still the Kent variant.

“We are seeing some outbreaks in primary schools and some in secondary schools, which is reflected elsewhere across the country,” he added. “That’s mostly because younger people have not been vaccinated, so we are working closely with our schools to manage those outbreaks.

“There have been three weeks where our rates have gone up. We have come back down but we do expect it to go back up as there are some outbreaks at schools.”

He said the increase always looked worse when you were coming from such a low base, but urged the public to continue with the asymptomatic testing.

“Our key message is getting parents of primary school children to do the testing,” he added. “We also want people to get a PCR test if they are symptomatic.”

Secondary pupils are no longer required to wear a face mask in schools but Mr Pearce said the council was monitoring the situation locally to see if it had any impact.

Council leader, Lynne Doherty (Con, Speen) added that testing would be “a key tool in our defence going forward”.