[ad_1]
Britain has imposed an immediate travel ban to and from South Africa, following the discovery of two cases of the mutant variation of Covid-19 that arrived with people arriving from this country.
In a briefing yesterday afternoon, UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock said that anyone who has arrived in the UK from South Africa in the past 14 days “should immediately self-quarantine.”
He added: “By quarantine, I mean they should restrict contact with anyone else.
“We will change the law so that this legal effect is imminent.”
Hancock said that “these measures are temporary while we investigate this new strain” to be tested at the country’s Porton Down Chemical and Biological Weapons Research Facility.
ALSO READ: There’s no reason to panic over the virus variant, but Mkhize has a stern message for young people
He said that as part of the UK’s ongoing surveillance of the virus and the “impressive genomic capabilities of South Africans”, they had identified cases among contacts of people who had come to the UK in the past two weeks.
On the last day, he said, the British experts had met with their South African counterparts and “we are incredibly grateful to the South African government for the rigor of its science and the openness and transparency with which they have acted correctly as we did when we discovered we had a new variant here “.
Last Friday, South African Health Minister Dr. Zweli Mkhize revealed that the second wave of Covid-19 cases rapidly accelerating in this country is being driven by a new variant of the coronavirus that spreads faster and it will bring more cases than the first wave of the pandemic. .
READ MORE: Limpopo on high alert for Covid-19
Later reports suggested that a very similar variant had been identified in the UK, and it was later confirmed that the two variants had developed independently of each other.
Hancock’s announcement yesterday confirms that there are two different variants.
South Africa’s top adviser on the pandemic, Professor Salim Abdool Karim, said the second wave has now affected every province in this country, “with some early signs that it is spreading faster than the first wave.”
However, he said that “it was not clear if this second wave has more or fewer deaths.
“We have not seen red flags in our current information on deaths.”
Although Mkhize and his experts said there was no cause for panic, because current diagnostic and treatment protocols were as effective as they were with the first wave variants, the harsh methods proposed by UK authorities indicate that there may be A growing concern in both countries not only about the speed at which the variant spreads, but also about its potential lethality.
This casts doubt on Mkhize’s pledge last week that scientific advisers would not recommend that the government implement more lockdown restrictions.
For more news your way, download The Citizen app to iOS and Android.
[ad_2]
