Nervtag briefing: During lockdown, Kent was a mystery. Everywhere cases were falling or plateauing by November 20, but not in Kent. PHE went in to investigate. Couldn't see behavioural explanation. So they sent in the geneticists. 1/
That's when they noticed the variant rising.

Looking back over the period of lockdown, they could track its progress. Nationally, R was 0.8. If you treat the variant as another separate virus, its R was 1.2.
It's now 80 per cent of cases in London.
One addition, the government is getting attacked because this has been "known about since Sept 20". It's pretty clear that while the variant was first detected then, loads of mutations are deetected all the time. It wasn't a concern until days before we learnt.
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