The UK may need to reimpose local COVID-19 restrictions if the ongoing mass testing operation fails to put the South African variant under control, a medical expert has warned. “I think there is a significant risk of a wave occurring in the summer,” professor John Edmunds, an expert on infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told ITV’s Peston Podcast. But there is “huge uncertainty” about how serious it will be in terms of hospitalisations and deaths, said Edmunds, who is a member of the UK government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE). Talking about the different variants of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, he said, “Of the ones that are known at the moment, the South African variant is probably the most worrying, and so I think it’s right that we do everything we can to try and keep the cases of that down.” …