British PM Johnson Was in Contact with COVID-19 Carrier

NHS test and trace has notified British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his finance minister Rishi Sunak as contacts of someone who has tested positive for COVID, Downing Street announced on Sunday.

“They will be participating in the daily contact testing pilot to allow them to continue to work from Downing Street," Downing Street said in a statement. “They will be conducting only essential government business during this period.”

British Health Minister Sajid Javid said, Saturday, he tested positive for Covid-19, less than a month after returning to Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s cabinet to lead the government’s response to the pandemic.

Javid said, in a video on Twitter, that he was feeling “a bit groggy” on Friday night and took a lateral flow test Saturday morning that gave a positive result. He’s now waiting for laboratory confirmation from a PCR test.

Javid, 51, who said he’s fully vaccinated, was self-isolating at home with his family. The minister affirmed that his symptoms were “very mild.”

This positive test comes days before many coronavirus restrictions are set to be lifted in England in what’s been dubbed “Freedom Day,” but as cases, especially of the delta variant, surge.

The British daily cases reported in the U.K. on Friday topped 50,000 for the first time since early January. The government expects daily cases to possibly top 100,000 by next month as the delta variant spreads, particularly among younger people who’ve yet to been vaccinated.