New Covid strain ‘out of control’

European countries started banning flights coming from the UK yesterday as government in London warned that a potent new strain of the virus was "out of control".

Following the example of the Netherlands, where a ban on all UK passenger flights came into effect yesterday, a German government source said Berlin, too, was considering a similar move as "a serious option" for flights from both Britain and South Africa.

The Dutch ban came into effect from 6:00 am (0500 GMT) and will last until January 1. And neighbouring Belgium also said it was suspending flight and train arrivals from Britain from midnight.

The moves come as around a third of England's population entered a Christmas lockdown and UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock warned that the new strain of virus was "out of control".

Prime Minister Boris Johnson had said the day before that millions of Britons would have to cancel their Christmas plans and stay home because the new strain was spreading far more quickly.

Speaking on Sky News, Hancock said the situation was "deadly serious."

"It's going to be very difficult to keep it under control until we have the vaccine rolled out," he said.

It seems that scientists first discovered the new variant in a patient in September.

Susan Hopkins of Public Health England told Sky News that the agency notified the government on Friday when modelling revealed the full seriousness of the new strain.

She confirmed a figure given by Johnson that the new virus strain could be 70 percent more transmissible.

The World Health Organization is calling on its members in Europe to strengthen measures against coronavirus due to the new variant circulating in the UK, its European branch told AFP yesterday.

Outside Britain, nine cases of the new strain have been reported in Denmark, as well as one case in the Netherlands and another in Australia, according to the WHO.

"Across Europe, where transmission is intense and widespread, countries need to redouble their control and prevention approaches," a spokeswoman for WHO Europe said.

Last week, Europe has become the first region in the world to pass 500,000 deaths from Covid-19 since the pandemic broke out a year ago, killing more than 1.6 million worldwide and pitching the global economy into turmoil. Countries are shutting down their economies again in a bid to rein in the virus.

The Netherlands is under a five-week lockdown until mid-January with schools and all non-essential shops closed to slow a surge in the virus.

Italy also announced a new regime of restrictions until January 6 that included limits on people leaving their homes more than once a day, closing non-essential shops, bars and restaurants and curbs on regional travel.

50,000 DEATHS IN RUSSIA

In Russia, health authorities said that the number of people who have died from the coronavirus has surpassed the 50,000 mark and now stands at 50,858.

But some experts believe that the real number could be much higher, with one former demographer at Russia's state statistics agency, Alexei Raksha, putting it as high as 250,000.

Raksha, who left Rosstat in July, told AFP that the Russian health ministry and the consumer health agency "downplay and falsify" the statistics.

A year after the pandemic first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the rapid rollout of vaccinations is now seen as the only effective way to end the crisis and the economically devastating lockdowns used to halt its spread.

Europe is expected to start a massive vaccination campaign after Christmas following the United States and Britain, which have begun giving jabs with an approved Pfizer-BioNTech shot, one of several leading candidates.

Russia and China have also started giving out jabs with their own domestically produced vaccines.

The United States on Friday authorised Moderna's Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use, paving the way for millions of doses of a second jab to be shipped across the hardest-hit country in the world.

The coronavirus has killed at least 1,685,785 people since the outbreak emerged in China last December, according to a tally from official sources yesterday.

NEW CURBS IN SYDNEY

Sydney was isolated from the rest of Australia yesterday after all of the country's states and territories imposed travel restrictions on its residents as a coronavirus cluster in the city grew to around 70, reports Reuters.

The Australian Capital Territory (ACT) sent a stern 'do not come to us' message to Sydney, the country's most populous city of more than five million people, warning its residents they would be quarantined for 14 days if they arrived.

"If you are not an ACT resident and have been in greater Sydney...our message is simple: do not travel to the ACT," the ACT health department said.

Thailand will test more than 10,000 people for coronavirus after an outbreak linked to its biggest seafood market, officials said yesterday.