A growing number of countries on Sunday halted flights from the UK following the discovery of a new variant of COVID-19.
A growing number of countries on Sunday halted flights from the UK following the discovery of a new variant of COVID-19, which is said by officials to spread faster than others.
The Republic of Ireland is banning flights from Britain on Monday and Tuesday."In the interests of Public Health, people in Britain, regardless of nationality, should not travel to Ireland, by air or by sea," the Irish government announced in a statement. Italy will also suspend flights to and from the UK, as well as banning entry to anyone who has been in Britain in the past two weeks, Health Minister Roberto Speranza said on Facebook Sunday.
And the Czech Republic imposed a mandatory 10-day quarantine on anyone arriving from the UK starting Sunday. Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty said on Saturday that the new variant is responsible for 60% of infections in London, which have nearly doubled in the last week. The new variant of COVID-19 originates in southeast England and has been identified in Denmark, the Netherlands and in Australia, World Health Organization Covid-19 technical lead Maria Van Kerkhove said on Sunday.
"All of the different measures we have in place, we need more of them to control the spread of the new variant than we did to control the spread of the old variant," he added, in response to whether current measures to protect people, such as the use of masks and the 2-meter rule , was enough to protect people from the new strain.