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Race against time to find travellers from new Covid variant hotspots

David Bond and Rachael Burford

UK health officials were today in a race against time to track down people who have arrived from six African countries over fears they could be carrying a new Covid variant which has alarmed scientists.

The sudden decision to place South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho, Botswana, Eswatini and Zimbabwe on the red list from midday sparked a scramble for Britons to get home before the deadline. From midday travellers from the six countries will have to self-isolate for 10 days, with those arriving after 4am on Sunday required to quarantine in a hotel.

There are no known cases in the UK, but scientists are worried the B.1.1.529 variant, first identified in South Africa, could be more resistant

to the current crop of vaccines. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps today appealed to anyone who had just arrived into the UK from South Africa or any of the other five countries to contact NHS Test and Trace and to immediately take a PCR test.

He said: “We are contacting those people already, that work is under way to make sure they are taking PCR tests and getting the extra checks done, so we are able to contact each of the individuals through passenger locator forms.” In other developments:

• Health Secretary Sajid Javid was updating MPs on the situation in an urgent statement to Parliament.

• The European Commission’s President

Ursula von der Leyen said the EU would apply an “emergency brake” by also stopping flights from the southern African region. The Netherlands and Italy have imposed similar travel bans while Germany said it was considering following suit.

• The City was rocked by the new variant, with the FTSE 100 falling more than two per cent this morning. Stocks in Asia suffered their sharpest drop in three months while the price of oil plunged more than three per cent.

• The World Health Organisation said it could take weeks to understand the impact of the variant. WHO officials were meeting this morning to discuss whether to give the strain the official classification of a “variant of concern”.

Mr Shapps said today that there was nothing in the data to suggest there was any need to introduce “Plan B” measures, which include the mandatory wearing of face masks and vaccine certification to enter certain venues such as bars and restaurants.

The move to suspend flights and add the six African countries to the red list — which was scrapped last month — was designed to buy scientists time to research the new variant, he said.

“It is important to make sure that you act immediately and in doing so you get to slow things down in terms of potential entry into the country,” Mr Shapps told Sky News. “That gives us a bit of time for the scientists to work on sequencing the genome, which involves growing cultures — it takes several weeks to do — so we can find out how significant a concern this particular variant is.

“It is a safety-first approach. We have done that before with… the mink variant from Denmark and we were then able to relax it reasonably quickly.”

South Africa’s government said the UK move to suspend flights was “rushed”. “Our immediate concern is the damage that this decision will cause to both the tourism industries and businesses of both countries,” said foreign minister Naledi Pandor.

The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention strongly discouraged travel bans on countries that had reported the variant, saying they have “not yielded a meaningful outcome”.

UK health officials were criticised for acting too slowly on travel bans from India and other countries after the discovery of the Delta variant in late 2020.

Within hours of a meeting of UK chief medical officers at 4pm yesterday, ministers had taken the decision to add the six countries to the red travel list.

While Covid infection levels remain high in the UK, hospitalisations and deaths are relatively low compared with last winter’s peak.

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2021-11-26T08:00:00.0000000Z

2021-11-26T08:00:00.0000000Z

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