England's Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Professor Jonathan Van-Tam has said he does not believe the South African variant of the coronavirus will become dominant in the UK.
Using one of his analogies, which he has become renowned for, Prof Van-Tam told the BBC that the mutation first identified in Kent account for more than 90 per cent of cases and there had been fewer than 200 cases of the South African variant.
He said: "If you are running a bath and you have got the hot tap on and you add in a very small amount of cold water, so the cold tap is running as well but at really a very low volume, your bath water is basically going to remain hot.
"It's only if that cold tap was gushing much more than the hot tap, the cold water would take over.
"That's probably the best analogy I can give you at the moment. There are no signs that South African variant is running at that speed at the moment and therefore I don't frame it as something that is going to be a dominant issued in the next few months."
It comes as mass testing is taking place in Moss Side and some postcode areas of Manchester, as 'variants of concern' were discovered in two households with no connection to South Africa travel.
Up to 10,000 people this week will have the opportunity to get tested.
Separately, Prof Van-Tam expressed concern about vaccine take-up in BAME communities and also about fake information being circulated that vaccinations affect fertility.
He condemned the "nasty, pernicious" scare stories circulating on social media about it affecting fertility.
“I have concerns that uptake in the minority ethnic groups is not going to be as rapid or as high as in the indigenous white population of the UK," he added.
