Health officials in Ireland, where a more infectious variant of the coronavirus first discovered in England has been surging, said they believe three cases of another new variant found in South Africa had been contained.

Ireland is grappling with a Covid-19 surge that has exceeded last year's first wave. It confirmed the first cases of the more infectious variant found in South Africa in people who had travelled to Ireland from South Africa over the Christmas holidays.

Ireland this week reported an increasing presence of the variant first found in England. It was detected in 25 per cent of positive cases that underwent further testing in the week to Jan 3, up from just 9pc two weeks earlier.

“The UK variant is of more concern to us purely because of the amount of virus that's on the island, and we know that it's transmitting in the community,” Cillian De Gascun, the head of Ireland's national virus laboratory, told national broadcaster RTE.