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Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Canada have joined a growing list of countries banning travel to and from the UK as part of an attempt to block a new strain of coronavirus that is spreading across the southeast of England.
Sunday’s travel bans came hours after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that Christmas shopping and gatherings in London and many of its surrounding areas had to be canceled due to the rapid spread of infections attributed to the new variant of the coronavirus.
Johnson also placed those regions under strict Level 4 restrictions, changing Christmas plans for millions of people and prompting France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Ireland and Bulgaria to impose travel restrictions to the UK. .
Argentina’s Interior Ministry said in its statement that the last flight from the UK before the suspension begins is scheduled to arrive in Buenos Aires on Monday morning.
Passengers and crew arriving on that flight will have to go into a seven-day quarantine, he said.
Chile’s government said non-resident foreigners who have been in the UK for the past 14 days will be barred from entering the country. The measure will take effect at midnight Tuesday and will last for two weeks, according to the Chilean statement. The president of Colombia, Iván Duque, also suspended all flights to the United Kingdom and said that anyone who arrives in the country as of Monday “who has been in the United Kingdom will enter a 14-day isolation in our country.”
Canada announced its own ban on Sunday night. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in a statement that for 72 hours from midnight Sunday, “all flights from the UK will be barred from entering Canada.”
He added that travelers arriving on Sunday would be subject to secondary examinations and other health measures. A government follow-up statement said cargo flights were not included in the ban.
‘The new variant is out of control’
The British government said Johnson would chair a meeting of the government’s crisis committee, COBRA, on Monday following actions by other nations. They come at a time of great economic uncertainty for the UK, less than two weeks before it finally leaves the European Union on December 31, with talks about a post-Brexit trade relationship still stalled.
Johnson said on Saturday that a new, fast-moving variant of the virus that is 70 percent more transmissible than existing strains appeared to be driving the rapid spread of new infections in London and England in recent weeks. But he stressed that “there is no evidence to suggest that it is more lethal or causes more serious disease,” or that vaccines are less effective against it.
On Sunday, British Health Secretary Matt Hancock added to the alarm when he said “the new variant is out of control.” The UK recorded 35,928 additional confirmed cases, roughly double the number from a week ago.
Germany, which has banned all flights from the UK as of midnight Sunday, called a special crisis meeting on Monday to coordinate the response to news of the virus among the 27 member states of the bloc.
The sun sets behind the Victoria Tower, part of the Palace of Westminster, when a plane lands at Heathrow in London on December 4, 2020 [Photo by Tolga Akmen / AFP]
The Netherlands banned flights from the UK for at least until the rest of the year, while France banned all travel from the UK for 48 hours starting at midnight Sunday, including trucks carrying goods across the tunnel under the English Channel or from the port of Dover. on the south coast of England.
French officials said the pause would buy time to find a “common doctrine” on how to deal with the threat, but it threw into chaos the busy canal-crossing route used by thousands of trucks a day.
The port of Dover tweeted on Sunday night that its ferry terminal was “closed to all accompanied traffic leaving the UK until further notice due to border restrictions in France.”
Eurostar passenger trains from London to Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam were also stopped.
Ireland and Belgium issued flight bans for 48 hours and 24 hours, respectively. Italy said it would block flights from the UK until January 6 and an order signed on Sunday prohibits entry into Italy for anyone who has been to the UK in the past 14 days.
The Czech Republic imposed stricter quarantine measures on people arriving from the UK.
Beyond Europe, Israel also said it was banning flights from Britain, Denmark and South Africa because they were countries where the mutation had been found.
‘Unusual number of variants’
The World Health Organization (WHO) tweeted on Saturday night that it was “in close contact with UK officials about the new variant of the # COVID19 virus” and promised to update governments and the public as more becomes known. .
The new strain was identified in south-east England in September and has been spreading in the area ever since, a WHO official told the BBC media network on Sunday.
“What we understand is that it has a higher transmissibility, in terms of its ability to spread,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO technical lead on COVID-19.
Studies are underway to better understand how fast it spreads and whether “it is related to the variant itself or a combination of factors to behavior,” he added.
He said the strain had also been identified in Denmark, the Netherlands and Australia, where there was one case that did not spread further.
“The more this virus spreads, the more opportunities it has to change,” he said. “So we really have to do everything we can right now to prevent the spread.”
Viruses mutate regularly, and scientists have found thousands of different mutations among samples of the virus that causes COVID-19. Many of these changes do not affect how easily the virus spreads or the severity of symptoms.
“The mutation rate so far has not been worrying,” said Dr. Priya Sampathkumar, associate professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic in the United States. “Typically, mutations take much longer than a few months to have a significant impact on the behavior of the virus. Usually, it is years of mutation that change the behavior of viruses. But the fact that this particular strain has become the predominant strain in the UK is a bit concerning. “
Speaking from Rochester, Minnesota, Sampathkumar said the Al Jazeera lockdowns and travel restrictions were a “good idea until we know more about the new strain.”
“Vaccination has just started in the UK, and if we start to see a lot of cases in people who have been vaccinated, then maybe this mutation has made the vaccine less effective,” he added. “But until we have enough vaccinated people, we won’t know for sure.”
British health authorities said that while the variant had been circulating since September, it wasn’t until last week that officials felt they had enough evidence to declare that it had higher transmissibility than other circulating coronaviruses.
Patrick Vallance, the British government’s chief scientific adviser, said officials were concerned about the new variant because it contained 23 different changes, “an unusually large number of variants” that affect how the virus attaches itself to cells in the body. and enter them.
Officials weren’t sure if it originated in the UK, Vallance added. But in December, it said it was behind more than 60 percent of infections in London.
President-elect nominee Joe Biden as the United States surgeon general said Sunday that the emergence of the new strain does not change public health guidance on precautions to reduce the spread of the virus, such as use of masks, social distancing and hand washing.
“While it appears to be easier to transmit, we still have no evidence that this is a more deadly virus for a person who gets it,” Dr. Vivek Murthy said on NBC’s Meet the Press.
“There is no reason to believe that the vaccines that have been developed will not be effective against this virus either.”
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