Commuters will walk the Thames Path with a view to Tower Bridge in London, UK on Monday, December 14, 2020.
Hollie Adams | Bloomberg via Getty Images
The Netherlands, Belgium and Austria banned flights from the UK and Germany on Sunday, considering restricting such flights to ensure that a new form of coronavirus sweeping through southern England does not gain a strong foothold on the continent.
The Netherlands banned flights from the UK for at least the rest of the year, while Belgium issued a flight ban for 24 hours from midnight and also stopped train connections to Great Britain, including the Eurostar. German officials considered “serious options” with regard to inbound flights from the UK, but have not yet taken any action.
Austria said it would also halt flights from the UK, but there were no immediate details on the timing of the ban, Austrian news agency APA reported. The Czech Republic, meanwhile, imposed tougher quarantine measures for people coming from the UK
The five EU governments say their response comes in response to tougher measures imposed on Saturday in London and surrounding areas by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. He immediately placed those regions in a new Tier 4 level of restrictions, saying that a fast-moving new variant of the virus that is 70% more transmissible than existing strains appears to be causing the rapid spread of new infections in London and southern England. .
“There is no indication that it is more deadly or causes more serious disease,” Johnson said, or that vaccines will be less effective against it.
Italy also plans to suspend flights to and from the UK over concerns over the new coronavirus strain, Foreign Minister Luigi di Maio announced local time on Sunday afternoon.
Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said on Sunday that he issued the flight ban for 24 hours from midnight “as a precaution”.
“There are a lot of questions about this new mutation and if there isn’t one on the mainland yet,” he said. He hoped to have more clarity on Tuesday.
The World Health Organization tweeted late Saturday, “We are in close contact with UK officials about the new # COVID19 virus variant.” It promised to keep governments and the public informed as more is learned about this variant.
The new strain of the coronavirus was identified in southeast England in September and has been circulating in the area ever since, a WHO official told the BBC on Sunday.
“What we understand is that it has increased transmissibility, in terms of its dispersibility,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical leader on COVID-19.
Studies are underway to better understand how quickly it spreads and whether “it is related to the variant itself, or a combination of factors with behavior,” she said.
She said the species had also been identified in Denmark, the Netherlands and Australia, where there was one case that did not spread further.
“The longer this virus spreads, the more chances it has to change,” she said. “So now we really need to do everything we can to prevent spread, and minimizing that spread will reduce the likelihood of change.”
Susan Hopkins of Public Health England said that although the variant has been circulating since September, it wasn’t until this week that officials felt they had enough evidence to state that it has greater transmissibility than other circulating viruses.
The species has spread to other parts of the UK, but in smaller quantities than London and surrounding areas, she told the BBC.
Germany has not yet imposed a ban, but is also considering restricting or halting flights from the UK, the dpa news agency reported on Sunday. A senior German official told Dpa that restrictions on flights from Britain are a “serious option”.
The Czech Republic announced that all people arriving in the country who have spent at least 24 hours on British soil in the past two weeks must isolate from this Sunday.
Germany, which holds the rotating presidency of the EU with 27 countries, was in contact with its neighbors and closely followed all developments around the new variant, dpa reported.
Europe has been trapped by new infections and deaths from a resurgence of the virus this fall, and many countries have re-imposed a series of restrictions to control their outbreaks.
Britain has seen more than 67,000 deaths in the pandemic, the second highest confirmed toll in Europe, after Italy.
Johnson closed all non-essential stores, hairdressers, gyms and swimming pools on Saturday and told the British to reorganize their vacation plans. Household mixing is now no longer allowed in Tier 4 areas, including London, and only essential travel is allowed in and out of such areas. In the rest of England, people are only allowed to meet in Christmas bells for one day instead of the five days scheduled.
—Reuters contributed to this report.