South Africa to be put on England’s travel red
list over new Covid variant
Flights from six countries will be banned as officials
review travel measures after scientists voice concern over variant
Hannah
Devlin, Ian Sample and Jessica Elgot
Thu 25 Nov
2021 21.22 GMT
Flights
from southern Africa will be banned, with six countries placed under England’s
red list travel restrictions, after scientists raised the alarm over what is
feared to be the worst Covid-19 variant yet identified.
Whitehall
sources said the B.1.1.529 variant, which is feared to be more transmissible
and has the potential to evade immunity, posed “a potentially significant
threat to the vaccine programme which we have to protect at all costs”.
Hundreds of
people who have recently returned from South Africa, where the variant was
detected, and neighbouring countries are expected to be tracked down and
offered tests in an effort to avoid the new variant entering the UK.
Dr Tom
Peacock of Imperial College London said the variant ‘could be of real concern’
but may just be an ‘odd cluster’
The
variant, which was identified on Tuesday, initially caused concern because it
carries an “extremely high number” of mutations meaning that the spike protein
looks different from the version that vaccines were designed to target. The
latest data, presented by South African scientists on Thursday, revealed that
the variant also appears to be more transmissible and is already present in
provinces throughout the country.
As well as
placing South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho, Botswana, Eswatini and Zimbabwe on
England’s travel red list and banning flights from Friday, officials are
reviewing a number of travel measures including whether there should be a
limited reintroduction of the use of PCR tests for arrivals. Travellers who
test positive will be strongly encouraged to take a PCR so that their results
can be sequenced to test for variants. The Scottish government later confirmed
all arrivals from the six countries will be required to self-isolate and take
two PCR tests from midday on Friday, while anyone arriving after 4am on
Saturday will need to stay at a managed quarantine hotel. There are no direct
flights from any of the countries into Scotland.
Israel also
announced it will ban its citizens from travelling to southern Africa –
covering the same six countries as well as Mozambique – and barring the entry
of foreign travellers from the region.
No cases of
the new variant have been detected in the UK.
Announcing
the move, the health secretary, Sajid Javid, said: “We’ve always been clear
that we will take action to protect the progress that we have made.
“Our
scientists are deeply concerned about this variant. I’m concerned, of course,
that’s one of the reasons we have taken this action.”
He said
that more work was needed to understand how concerning the variant is, adding:
“From what we do know there’s a significant number of mutations, perhaps double
the number of mutations that we have seen in the Delta variant.
“That would
suggest that it may well be more transmissible and the current vaccines that we
have may well be less effective.”
Ewan
Birney, the deputy director general of the European Molecular Biology
Laboratory and a member of Spi-M, which advises the UK government, said it
posed a risk of worsening the pandemic.
He urged
countries not to repeat the mistake of failing to act quickly. “What we’ve
learned from the other situations like this – some have turned out OK and some
haven’t – is that whilst we’re [investigating] you have to be reasonably
paranoid,” he said.
The new
variant was identified after a surge of cases in Gauteng, an urban area
containing Pretoria and Johannesburg. Initially the cluster of cases, centred
on a university, was assumed to be because of an increase in socialising.
However,
this week the variant was identified as a potential cause of the increase. The
first detected cases of the variant were collected in Botswana on 11 November
and a case has also been found in Hong Kong – a 36-year-old man who tested
positive while in quarantine after a trip to South Africa.
In the past
48 hours, South African scientists reviewed PCR test data from the Gauteng
region and discovered the variant appeared to be behind the increase in cases,
having risen to account for about 90% of cases in a matter of weeks. At a
national level, South Africa’s daily number of infections hit 1,200 on Wednesday,
up from 106 earlier in the month.
Speaking at
a hastily called news conference on Thursday, the virologist Tulio de Oliveira
said: “We can see very early signs that this lineage has rapidly increased in
prevalence in Gauteng and may already be present in most provinces.”
Prof Anne
von Gottberg, a clinical microbiologist and head of respiratory diseases at the
National Institute of Communicable Diseases in South Africa, said there were
now about 100 cases confirmed through full sequencing of samples, up from just
10 reported on Wednesday, and signs of community transmission.
Prof
Richard Lessells, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of
KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, said the coming days and weeks would be key to
determining the severity of the variant. “At the beginning of a resurgence we
sometimes get fooled into thinking everything is a milder disease, and that can
be because it’s initially spreading in younger age groups, so we have to see as
the spread becomes more generalised whether we are seeing cases of more severe
disease,” he said.
“What gives
us some concerns [is] that this variant might not just have enhanced
transmissibility, so spreads more efficiently, but might also be able to get
around parts of the immune system and the protection we have in our immune
system,” he added.
Birney and
other UK scientists called for new controls to be brought in immediately,
saying that it would be preferable to reverse measures if the variant was found
to be less of a concern than feared following further investigation.
Until now,
England no longer had any countries on the red list imposing quarantine on
travellers arriving from abroad. People who are not fully vaccinated must test
negative before flying and arrange two PCR tests on arrival. Those who are
fully vaccinated need to have a Covid test within two days of landing.
The World
Health Organization said it was “closely monitoring” the reported variant and
was expected to convene a technical meeting on Friday to determine if it should
be designated a variant of “interest” or of “concern”.
A No 10
spokesperson said: “We have one of the largest genomic sequencing programmes
here in the UK that allows us to spot and track variants as they emerge and, as
we have done throughout the pandemic, we will continue to keep an eye and keep
this particular variant under investigation.”
Asked
whether more travel restrictions would be needed before Christmas as a result
of the variant, the spokesperson said: “If we believe we need to take action we
will, but we will continue to monitor this variant and other variants in the
same way that we have done throughout the pandemic.”
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário