LONDON – The United Kingdom became increasingly isolated on Monday as countries around the world closed their doors to the island nation, possibly with a more contagious strain of the coronavirus.
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 location or origin.
Emergency meetings were scheduled in London and Brussels, as officials discussed how to respond differently, which experts estimate is 70 percent more transmissible than others in circulation.
At Dover, England’s main port, as a sign of the country’s proximity to the European Union, freight officials warned earlier this week that the new travel ban could wreak havoc on food and cargo supply chains ahead of Christmas.
France’s transport minister, Jean-Baptiste Dejebbari, stepped in to address these concerns, and he tweeted that “in the coming hours” Europe will take health control measures to allow the flow of traffic to resume.
However, chaos is already being witnessed on highways, railway stations and grocery stores. People are moving in trains to avoid the new domestic sanctions announced by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and stock up on essentials for fear of potential shortages.
Still, governments around the world are scrambling to stop the recent outbreak of the so-called Covid-19 strain, which appears to have been found in the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium and Iceland.
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The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control said in a briefing on Monday that the new strain was “significantly more transmissible than previously circulating variables.” It is far from the first new type of coronavirus known this year, and experts say there is no evidence that it is more lethal or that vaccines will not work against it.
The United States is not among the countries to close their borders, officials resist the call to follow suit.
“Today he’s boarding a plane and landing at JFK,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told reporters 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 you learn?”
Under the travel coronavirus ban imposed by President Donald Trump, most foreign nationals who have traveled to Europe for the past 14 days have been barred from entering the U.S. but this does not apply to U.S. citizens under the age of 21, legal residents or their family members.
For the UK alone – Covid-19 is already struggling between the worst death rates and Brexit’s incoming logistic chaos – it has fallen into a paradoxical state overnight due to closure.
On Saturday, Johnson made his latest U-turn, asking tens of millions of people in south-east England to cancel their Christmas plans as they made sure they could move on.
Imposing a strict new lockdown on two-thirds of the country, Johns blamed the appearance of the new variable. But experts have been warning for a month that their plan to allow people to merge indoors for five days around Christmas would lead to more cases, hospitalizations and deaths.
The front page of the left British tabloid, the Daily Mirror, referred to the UK as “Sick Man Europe for Europe” – a name given to countries with a variety of diseases since the mid-1800s.
