People in areas tested for South African strain urged to stay home

Think twice before going outside – that’s the urgent message to anyone living in the areas where worrying new strains of Coronavirus have been detected, while efforts to test tens of thousands of people have got underway.

As well as the South African strain, worrying mutations in the UK variant have also been found, which could make the vaccine less effective.

The latest government figures show a further 1,449 deaths have been reported in the latest available 24 hour period, bringing the UK total to 108,013.

There have been nearly 17,000 new cases in the UK.

And another 350,000 people received their first dose of the Covid vaccine yesterday.

That means more than 9.5 million people have now received their first dose of a vaccine.

We report from Surrey, one of now several frontlines in the battle against this rapidly evolving disease.