Boris Johnson to hold 5pm Covid press conference amid growing concerns over Indian variant

Boris Johnson will hold a press conference tonight amid growing concerns about the Indian coronavirus variant. 

The Prime Minister is due to appear in Downing Street’s new briefing room at 5pm after coming under fire for taking too long to ban travel to India. 

No10 only announced India was being added to the UK’s travel ‘red list’ yesterday, and the measures won’t come into force until 4am on Friday. 

Hundreds of people will arrive in Britain from India this week before the restrictions come into effect. 

Labour slammed the Government for not banning arrival immediately, despite the variant being under investigation by UK officials for almost three weeks.

Sir Patrick Vallance’s predecessor admitted ministers were too slow to respond to the new variant, claiming the ban was ‘taken a bit too late in truth’.

Some 103 cases of the strain have been identified in the UK so far, the vast majority of which were linked to international travel. The PM has had to cancel a visit to India next week.

It is feared the B.1.617 variant that first emerged there spreads more easily than older strains and scientists say it has mutations which may help it evade vaccines.     

But top experts studying Britain’s Covid variants said the Indian variant was unlikely to ever take off in the UK because its mutations were ‘not top tier’. 

They questioned whether the strain actually is more transmissible than older versions or vaccine-resistant, claiming the evidence was still murky.

Shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symond told LBC: ‘As Labour has warned for months, failing to introduce strong protections at the border has left us exposed to mutations of the virus, which has now lead to dangerous outbreaks in the UK.

‘It is not good enough to try and shut the door after the horse has bolted, by adding countries onto a red list when it is too late. What’s needed is an urgent comprehensive hotel quarantine system.’

Meanwhile Labour chairwoman, Yvette Cooper, said the Covid variant from India had been under investigation for almost three weeks.

She told The Times: ‘The India variant has been under investigation for almost three weeks and other neighbouring countries with lower rates of infection were added to the red list ten days ago.’ 

Yesterday Matt Hancock told MPs that the government had made the ‘difficult’ decision to place India in the highest level of restrictions from 4am on Friday.

He claimed the ‘vast majority’ were linked to international travel.

He said: ‘After studying the data and on a precautionary basis we have made the difficult but vital decision to add India to the red list.’

Figures show there are now more than 200,000 confirmed Covid cases a day in India. 

The travel ban comes after Public Health England, confirmed in a routine report that 77 cases of the Indian variant had been found in the UK earlier this week.