There has been a "massive increase" in the number of symptom-free Covid-19 tests after it was revealed a strain of the South African variant was in Kent.

Kent County Council says its two Maidstone sites at Detling Showground and Sessions House, in the town centre, have been busier than usual following door-to-door surge testing.

Around 10,000 tests in the ME15 postcode were sent out this week after it was announced there was a case of the new variant there.

KCC's director of public health Andrew Scott-Clark said: “We have seen an increase this week in the numbers of people booking for symptom-free test sites at Detling Showground and Sessions House in Maidstone, following news of the door-to-door surge testing in parts of ME15.

"These two sites can take approximately 2500 bookings per day and we currently have 24 sites across Kent so we encourage people who don’t have symptoms to book a test to help us track and trace positive cases.

"This is the main way the community can help us reduce transmission, along with continuing to follow the national restrictions and guidelines of only leaving your home for essential reasons and self-isolating if you test positive.”

The county council announced it had finished delivering the thousands of tests yesterday, with 9,633 being handed out.

Named Operation Barton, the object was to determine whether there were any other cases of the South African variant of Covid-19 after one man from the area fell ill with it without having a link to the country.

Heading down for a test of my own on Wednesday in Sessions House at County Hall the line seemed longer than other times I had walked past and I was queued outside for about 10 minutes before being ushered in.

Once inside staff were helpful and quick, with one volunteer saying: "Ever since the new variant was announced it's been so busy. We must have seen 1,000 people today, it's been a massive increase.

"When we started up here I was only seeing people every 20 minutes, but now there's queues of people through the door."

Overall the whole process was quick and easy and took no more than 15 minutes to complete.

As of this morning at 9am there was still 1,000 appointments available for tests at Detling showground and around 500 for Sessions House, which is up slightly on the available slots from earlier in the week.

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