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LONDON – The UK became increasingly isolated on Monday as countries around the world closed their doors to the island after a possibly more infectious strain of the coronavirus was detected.
Nearly two dozen countries, including Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Iran, Colombia and Morocco, have suspended flights from the UK for 48 hours or more. Saudi Arabia has closed its borders and suspended all flights regardless of destination or origin.
Crisis meetings were scheduled in London and Brussels as officials struggled over how to respond to the variant, which experts estimate is 70 percent more transmissible than others in circulation.
At England’s main port of Dover, already stuck before this weekend as a symptom of the country’s impending decoupling from the European Union, cargo officials warned that new travel bans could wreak havoc on the supply chains of food and goods days before Christmas.
Over the weekend, there was chaos at train stations and grocery stores as people boarded trains to avoid new internal restrictions announced by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and stocked up on essentials for fear of a possible shortage.
Although governments around the world are racing to prevent the spread of the newly identified Covid-19 strain, that appears to have already happened with its detection in the Netherlands, Denmark and Australia. Experts say there is no evidence that it is more deadly or that vaccines do not work against it.
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The United States is not among the countries closing its borders, and officials are resisting calls to do the same.
“Today that variant is to get on a plane and land at JFK airport,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told reporters on Sunday, referring to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. “How many times in life do you have to make the same mistake before learning?”
Under President Donald Trump’s travel coronavirus travel bans, most foreign nationals who have been to Europe in the past 14 days are barred from entering the U.S. But this does not apply to US citizens, legal residents, or family members under the age of 21.
For Britain itself, already struggling with one of the worst death rates from Covid-19 and the looming logistics chaos of Brexit, the closures have reduced it to pariah status overnight.
On Saturday, Johnson made his latest U-turn, telling tens of millions in the southeast of England to cancel Christmas plans days after he assured them they could move on.
By imposing a strict new blockade on two-thirds of the country, Johnson blamed the emergence of the new variant. But experts have been warning for a month that his plan to allow people to mingle indoors for five days around Christmas would lead to more cases, hospitalizations and deaths.
The front page of the left-wing British tabloid The Daily Mirror called Britain the “Sick Man of Europe”, a label attributed to several sick countries since the mid-19th century.
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