More countries closed their borders to Britain on Monday over fears of a highly infectious new coronavirus strain, heightening global panic, causing travel chaos and raising the prospect of UK food shortages just days before the Brexit cliff edge.
India, Poland, Switzerland, Russia and Hong Kong suspended travel for Britons after Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned that a mutated variant of the virus up to 70% more infectious had been identified in the country, while Japan and South Korea said they were monitoring the situation.
A slew of countries have already suspended travel, including France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Ireland, Belgium, Israel and Canada.
The discovery of the new strain, just months before vaccines are expected to be widely available, sowed fresh panic in a pandemic that has killed about 1.7 million people worldwide and more than 67,000 in Britain.
Australia said two people who travelled from the United Kingdom to New South Wales state were found to be carrying the mutated virus.
Also read: Bangladesh mulls measures against new Covid-19 strain in UK
Johnson was scheduled to chair an emergency response meeting yesterday to discuss international travel, in particular the flow of freight in and out of Britain. EU officials held a meeting on coordinating their response.
France shut its border to arrivals of people and trucks from Britain, closing off one of the most important trade arteries with mainland Europe.
World closes borders to Britain as new coronavirus strain breeds panic https://t.co/oCoDR6znOr pic.twitter.com/Z5wEDEo9yw
— Reuters (@Reuters) December 21, 2020
As families and truck drivers tried to navigate the travel bans to get back home in time for Christmas, Britain's second-largest supermarket chain, Sainsbury's, said gaps would start to appear on shelves within days if transport ties were not quickly restored with mainland Europe.
Also read: Countries that have blocked travel from UK
Shellfish producers in Scotland said they had tons of perishable products stranded on roads as the French border was closed. Disruption in Britain will also snarl supplies to Ireland.
Variant VUI-202012/01
The new strain, dubbed VUI-202012/01 (first variant under investigation in December 2020), is said to be 70% more infectious and British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said Sunday that it “was out of control.”
A new variant also appeared independently in South Africa, carrying one of the mutations found in the UK strain.
Also read: WHO Europe urges stronger action to contain new virus strain
The new variant contains 23 different changes, many of them associated with how it binds to cells and enters them.
British Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said Britain had done some of the best global analysis of the mutations of the virus so it was simply seeing what was already at large in other countries.
Asian infections
The new virus strain has been identified in Britain at a time when Covid-19 cases have surged in several Asian countries that had previously successfully contained the pandemic. The spikes have prompted localized lockdowns in some countries and more aggressive testing.
South Korea, which imposes a 14-day quarantine on everyone entering the country, said it was reviewing new measures for flights from Britain, and would test twice those coming in from there before they were released from quarantine.
Also read: Are new coronavirus strains cause for concern?
New cases climbed to over 1,000 a day in South Korea several times last week. It reported on Sunday an outbreak in a Seoul prison where 188 inmates and staff were infected.
Thailand said on Sunday it was testing tens of thousands of people, and extended curbs on movement, following its worst outbreak yet that began at a market in a province that is a centre of the seafood industry and home to thousands of migrant workers.
Australia, where cases in Sydney have flared in recent days, cancelled dozens of domestic flights on Monday. New South Wales, which has reported 86 new local cases since Thursday, ordered more than a 250,000 people into a lockdown, though officials stressed the infections were not the UK strain.
Nearly 1.7 million dead
At least 1,693,576 people have died since the outbreak emerged in China last December, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP.
The US is the worst-hit country with 317,684 deaths, followed by Brazil with 186,764 fatalities, India with 145,810, Mexico with 118,202 and Italy with 68,799.
