Quote Originally Posted by the other bob wilson View Post
Apologies Elwood, I was wrong to include you in my criticism.

I see that the new variant was first noticed in September and so I think it's reasonable to assume that the four U.K. Governments have been aware of it for weeks if not months, so they could well have known that there may be something like what was revealed in those minutes on the way, but it was only confirmed on Friday and so I wonder if the delay in announcing new lockdowns, which I was critical of, could be partly down to a sense of "let's wait and see what the research into the variant comes up with before deciding"?
For clarification Dr Susan Hopkins of Public Health England stated this morning the mutation in question was first known about in October based on a September sample. Apparently there are very many mutations in existence and each one is investigated by Public Health England and their research partners including Imperial College. As the virus progressed the task was to establish whether the increasing numbers suffering from COVID could be linked to one of the mutated virus under investigation which took some time and eventually led to the release on Friday of the results as you acknowledge.

I don't think it was a question of "let's wait and see" as more often than not the mutations under investigation have little or no effect on the virus spreading. It just so happens that they found one that affected virus transmission and that was linked to the increasing numbers and caused the government to introduce the new restrictions one day later.