Covid-19: Brazilian Variant

Lord Empey Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My noble friend is stretching my immunological skills to the limit. The Brazilian variant has a number of mutations. It is not clear to us whether those are mutations of transmissibility, vaccine-escape mutations or reinfection mutations, and therefore which we should focus on. All are possible and we are keeping a careful eye on this. An enormous amount of investment and research is going into understanding this more carefully.

[Lord Empey (UUP) [V]]

My Lords, is my noble friend aware that Brazilian companies have a significant footprint in both parts of the island of Ireland? Given that there is a common travel area between the two, what discussions has he had with the Government of Ireland about this? How is it proposed to deal with inflows of people from Brazil who might be able to travel freely throughout these islands?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for flagging the Brazilian connection with Ireland, which I did not know about. I reassure him that there is an enormous amount of collaboration between Whitehall and Dublin on this matter. There are strong links on the managed quarantine programme within Ireland in order to close the “Dublin backdoor”, as it is sometimes called. I pay tribute to colleagues in Dublin for their collaborative approach. We do not currently have a five nations unified approach, but it is of interest. We are definitely keen to ensure that there is no backdoor entrance for VOCs through Dublin, or in the other direction.