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DOVER, England: Countries around the world closed their borders to Great Britain on Monday (December 21) due to fears about a highly infectious new strain of coronavirus, causing travel chaos and increasing the possibility of food shortages. days before Britain leaves the European Union. .
India, Pakistan, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Russia, Jordan and Hong Kong suspended British travel after Prime Minister Boris Johnson said a mutated variant of the virus had been identified in the country. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Oman closed their borders completely.
Several other nations blocked travel from Britain over the weekend, including France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Ireland, Belgium and Canada, although experts said the strain may already be circulating in countries with detection methods. less advanced than the UK.
France closed its border to the arrivals of people and trucks from Great Britain, closing one of the most important commercial arteries with continental Europe.
Trucks backed for miles on the road leading to the port of Dover, Britain’s main commercial gateway to the mainland, and thousands of drivers bound for Europe were stranded.
“My chances of coming home for Christmas are decreasing. It’s stupid and I’m nervous and unhappy about it,” said Stanislaw Olbrich, a 55-year-old Polish truck driver 25 miles north of Dover.
The discovery of the new strain, just months before vaccines are expected to become widely available, sowed a new panic in a pandemic that has killed around 1.7 million people worldwide and more than 67,000. in Great Britain.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo urged the United States government to take action to prevent the variant from entering the United States, which has been the hardest hit by COVID-19 with nearly 318,000 deaths.
“It’s about time the federal government took quick action, because today that variant is getting on a plane and landing at JFK, and all it takes is one person,” he said.
British Airways agreed to allow only passengers testing negative for the coronavirus to fly into New York’s John F Kennedy International Airport, it said.
US Undersecretary of Health Brett Giroir said nothing has yet been decided on the travel ban.
European officials met via video link to coordinate their response to the new strain. The EU is on track to start vaccines within a week after its drug regulator approved the use of an injection from Pfizer and BioNTech on Monday.
The experts said there was no evidence that the vaccines did not protect against this variant, but they were working around the clock to determine whether the mutations would affect the effectiveness of the vaccines against the infection.
The UK government’s chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, said stricter restrictions on public life are likely to be imposed in Britain.
“I will say that the evidence on this virus is that it spreads easily, it is more transmissible, we absolutely need to make sure we have the right level of restrictions,” Vallance told a news conference hosted by Johnson.
“And I think it is likely, therefore, that measures should be increased in some places in due course, not reduced.”
FOOD SHORTAGE WARNING
In addition to traffic jams around British ports, trucks were also backed up in Calais and other French ports. Although they are allowed to cross from France to Great Britain, the logistics chain that keeps goods moving has become unbalanced.
“No driver wants to deliver to the UK right now, so the UK will see its freight supply run out,” said France’s national federation for road transport FNTR.
READ: UK works ‘as quickly as possible’ to resolve border closures: Johnson
British supermarket chains Sainsbury’s and Tesco said shortages would start to appear in a few days if transport links were not quickly restored.
“If nothing changes, we will start to see gaps in the coming days in lettuce, some salad greens, cauliflower, broccoli and citrus, all of which are imported from the mainland at this time of year,” Sainsbury’s said.
The global alarm was reflected in the financial markets.
Travelers with their suitcases sit in the Eurostar terminal at St Pancras International, as EU countries impose a travel ban from the UK after the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in London, Greater Brittany, December 21, 2020 (Photo: REUTERS). / Hannah McKay)
European stocks plummeted, with travel and leisure stocks the most affected. British Airways owner IAG and easyJet fell about 7 percent, while Air France KLM lost about 3 percent.
Wall Street felt the pain, too, with losses across the board. The S&P 1500 Airlines Index fell 3 percent, while the major cruise operators fell 4 percent.
The British pound fell 2.5% against the dollar at one point before reducing some of the losses, while the yield on two-year British government bonds hit a record low.
CHRISTMAS CLAMPDOWN
Johnson canceled Christmas plans for millions of Britons on Saturday due to the most infectious strain of coronavirus, though he said there was no evidence that it was more deadly or caused a more serious illness.
READ: What we know about the new strain of coronavirus found in Great Britain
The new variant and restrictions in Britain compound the chaos as the country prepares to finally secede from the European Union, possibly without a trade deal, when the Brexit transition period at 2300 GMT on December 31.
Talks about a Brexit trade deal continued on Monday, but Johnson said there were still problems and the position had not changed.
The new variant, which scientists said was 40 to 70 percent more transmittable, has quickly become the dominant strain in parts of southern England, including London.
The experts who tracked it down said there was some early but unconfirmed evidence that it could be transmitted as easily between children and adults, unlike previous dominant strains.
Cases of the new strain have also been detected in a few other countries, including Denmark, Italy, and the Netherlands.
Australia said two people who traveled from Britain to the state of New South Wales were carrying the mutated virus. It eliminated dozens of domestic flights while New South Wales blocked more than 250,000 people.
Some scientists said the prevalence discovered in Britain could be due to more comprehensive detection.
“I think in the next few days we will find that many other countries will find it,” Marc Van Ranst, a virologist at the Rega Institute for Medical Research in Belgium, told VRT broadcaster.
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