Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Canada have joined a growing list of countries in banning travel to and from the United Kingdom as part of an effort to stop a new genre of coronavirus that spreads throughout southeast England.
Travel was banned on Sunday hours after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that Christmas shops and gatherings in London and many surrounding areas had to be canceled due to the rapid spread of diseases and blame the new version of coronavirus.
Johnson also placed these areas under the strict restrictions of a new Stage 4, maintaining Christmas plans for millions of people, and promoting France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Ireland and Bulgaria to put loops on UK travel.
Argentina’s Interior Ministry said in its statement that the last flight from the UK before the suspension began is expected to arrive in Buenos Aires on Monday morning.
Passengers and crew arriving on that plane must undergo a seven-day quarantine, he said.
The Chilean government has said that 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 on Tuesday and last two weeks, a Chilean statement said. Colombian President Ivan Duque also suspended all flights to the UK and said that anyone arriving in the country from Monday “who has been in the United Kingdom will go into isolation”. 14 days in our country ”.
Canada announced its ban on Sunday night. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in a statement that he will be banned from entering Canada for 72 hours starting at midnight Sunday.
He said passengers arriving Sunday would be subject to high school screening and other health measures. A follow-up statement from the government said flights were not included in the ban.
‘New version out of control’
The British government said Johnson would attend a meeting of the government’s emergency committee, COBRA, on Monday following the measures of other countries. They come at a time of economic uncertainty for the UK, less than two weeks before it finally leaves the European Union on 31 December, with talks on post-Brexit trade relations still unbroken.
Johnson said on Saturday that a rapid reversal of the virus that is 70 per cent more mobile than existing strains appeared to have led to the rapid spread of new infections in London and the south-east of England. a few weeks. But he stressed that “there is no evidence that it is more deadly or worse,” or that vaccines would not be as effective.
On Sunday, British Health Secretary Matt Hancock added the alarm when he said “the new variant is out of control”. The UK recorded an additional 35,928 cases, about twice the number a week ago.
Germany, which banned flights coming from the UK starting at midnight on Sunday, called a special emergency meeting on Monday to coordinate a response to the news of the virus among the 27 member states of the bloc.
The sun sets behind Victoria Tower, part of the Palace of Westminster, when a jet lands at Heathrow in London on 4 December 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 travel from the UK for 48 hours from midnight on Sunday, including lorries carrying goods through the tunnel under the English Channel or from the port of Dover on the south coast of England.
French officials said the truce would buy time to find “common instruction” on how to deal with the threat but threw the busy cross-channel route used by thousands of lorries every day to chaos.
Port Dover announced on Sunday night that the ferry terminal was “closed to all traffic leaving the UK until further notice was received due to border restrictions in France”.
Eurostar passenger trains from London to Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam were also stopped.
Ireland and Belgium banned flights for 48 hours and 24 hours, respectively. Italy has said it will suspend flights from the UK until January 6 and an order signed on Sunday prohibits entry into Italy by anyone who has been in the UK in the last 14 days. gone.
The Czech Republic imposed tighter quarantine measures from UK nationals.
Outside Europe, Israel also said it was banning flights from Britain, Denmark and South Africa because these are countries where the mutation has been detected.
‘Unusual number of changes’
The World Health Organization (WHO) tweeted late Saturday that they were “in close contact with UK officials on the new # COVID19 virus” and promised to update governments and the public as more is learned. .
The new strain was identified in the south-east of England in September and has been spreading in the region ever since, a WHO official told the BBC media network on Sunday.
“What we understand is that it has made more of a transmission, in terms of its transmission capacity,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO technical director of COVID-19.
Studies have begun to better understand how fast it spreads and whether it is “related to the variant itself, or a combination of behavioral factors,” she said.
She said the strain was identified in Denmark, the Netherlands and Australia, where there was one case that no longer spread.
“The longer this virus spreads, the more chances it will have to change,” she said. “So we really need to do everything we can to stop it spreading.”
Viruses circulate regularly, and scientists have found thousands of different mutations among samples of the virus that causes COVID-19. Many of these changes have no effect on how easily the virus spreads or how severe the symptoms are.
“The rate of change so far has not been a concern,” said Dr. Priya Sampathkumar, an associate professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic in the United States. “Typically, it takes much longer than a few months for mutations to significantly affect virus behavior. It is usually years of movement that change how viruses behave. But we are concerned that this particular pressure has become mainstream in the UK. “
Speaking from Rochester, Minnesota, Sampathkumar said Al Jazeera locks and travel restrictions were a good idea so we know more about the new snoring “.
“The vaccine has just started in the UK, and if we start to see a lot of cases in people who have been vaccinated this change may have made the vaccine so effective,” she said. until we get enough people on the vaccine, we are not going to know for sure. “
British health authorities said that although the variance had been circulating since September, it was not until last week that officials felt they had enough evidence to report mobility. higher than other circulating coronaviruses.
Patrick Vallance, the British government’s chief scientific adviser, said officials were concerned about the new variant as there were 23 different mutations, an “unusually large number of mutations” affecting the virus’s spread. connects with and enters cells in the body.
Officials were not sure if he came from the UK, Vallance said. But by December, he said he was behind more than 60 per cent of diseases in London.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s candidate for U.S. general surgeon said Sunday that the emergence of the new strain will not change public health guidelines on measures to reduce the spread of the virus, such as wearing masks, social distance and washing hands.
“While it may seem easier to export, we still don’t have evidence that this is a more deadly virus for anyone who gets it,” Dr Vivek Murthy told NBC’s Meet the Press TV network .
“There is no reason to believe that the vaccines that have been developed will not be effective against this virus, either.”