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Prime Minister Boris Johnson urgently meets his government this Monday, after many countries cut off all connection to the UK, due to a mutation of the coronavirus that exacerbates the chaos, ten days before Brexit.
Since the morning, posters on the motorways of southern England alerted travelers and carriers about the closure of the border with France, which the night before decided to suspend all links by land, sea and air with the country for 48 hours.
A large part of the produce imported by the British comes from there and a major supermarket chain, Sainsbury’s, has warned that if the disturbances drag on, supplies of fresh foods such as lettuce, cauliflower, broccoli or citrus could be lacking.
The authorities assured that there are reservations for days, but it was feared that consumers would rush to stock up, in a panic movement four days before the Christmas holidays, which in places like London, were affected by the emergence of this new strain of the virus.
Although it does not seem more lethal than the previous ones, this variant is up to 70% more contagiousBritish Health Minister Matt Hancock said over the weekend, acknowledging that he was “out of control.”
For that reason, and contradicting all his promises, on Sunday the Boris Johnson executive suddenly returned to confine the 9 million Londoners and 7 million more people in the south of the country, where families already They won’t be able to meet at Christmas.
In other parts of the UK, the expected five days of easing of restrictions were reduced to just 25 days.
Ten days to Brexit
The British port of Dover, the main one in the English Channel, through which some 10,000 trucks pass daily, closed outbound traffic “until further notice.”
Highlighting the need to unblock the situation “as soon as possible”, the Minister of Transport, Grant Shapps, assured the Sky News channel that he was in close contact with his French counterpart, Jean-Baptiste Djebbari.
The latter announced shortly after on Twitter the preparation, “in the next few hours”, by European countries of a “health protocol so that flows from the United Kingdom can resume.”
This chaos in the supply chains can be interpreted as a preview of what would happen if London and the 27 end up separating within ten days without a trade agreement that avoids customs barriers.
The United Kingdom, which officially left the European Union on January 31, definitively cut its ties with the block at the end of the month.
Despite the short time remaining, the British and Europeans continue to negotiate a trade agreement that should soften the consequences of the break from 1 January.
But in the absence of results, companies in the United Kingdom have been stockpiling industrial products and parts for weeks, which had already caused great congestion in ports and highways.
Faced with the new situation, Scottish Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon, a staunch opponent of Brexit, and London Mayor Sadiq Khan called on Johnson to extend the post-Brexit transition period beyond the end of the year.
Waiting for more vaccines
The United Kingdom, one of the most affected countries in Europe by covid-19, with more than 67,000 confirmed deaths and a record of nearly 36,000 new cases on Sunday, informed the World Health Organization (WHO) about the discovery of this mutation and its higher infection rate.
Hancock acknowledged on Sunday that in this context it will be “difficult” to contain the pandemic until the vaccination campaign reaches a large part of the population.
The UK was the first country in the world to approve the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine, and the first Western country to begin distributing it, on December 8. So far it has supplied about 400,000 people -The elderly, caregivers and health personnel- with the first of the two necessary doses.
However, to accelerate the campaign, it needs to receive new doses from the manufacturing laboratories of Pfizer / BioNTech in Belgium, one of the many countries that on Sunday decided to close its borders to the United Kingdom.
Shapps said Monday that delivery of the vaccine is not affected in any way by the transport disruption.
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