Several nations around Europe have put on travel limitation to the U.K after a new variant of coronavirus has been found within this region.
Worries once again went high, and the alarm of another deadly pandemic was rang. New variant of coronavirus from out of nowhere appeared in the U.K and forced the nation to declare the travel limitation. Health officials living in the U.K worriedly confessed that the new variant of coronavirus is 70% more transmissible than the one found in 2019. This new variant might explain the climbing infected cases of coronavirus in South East England in recent weeks.
In the past week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom had to put the tier 4 restrictions on South East side of London and the East side of the nation. According to the coronavirus measures of Britain, tier is the highest restriction level. This highest limitation is the consequence of a huge crowd of British rushing to the train station to leave London in the last weekends. For now, no one can travel out from the city, unless they do so for urgent purpose.
France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, and Ireland also acted quickly putting the new travel restriction on visitors from the U.K. On the other hand, they also restricted their citizens from traveling to the nation.
Other European countries, nations in Latin America, and territories in the Middle East also joined France banning traveling from and to Britain.
Johnson will meet with his colleagues and discuss about new restrictions on the nation, whereas European Union will plan how to tackle with the new variant of COVID-19.
Yesterday, officials from World Health Organization (WHO) addressed things that they knew so far about the new variant of coronavirus. The organization said that the U.K sent to them the substance of new variant of the virus after an epidemiologic investigation.
WHO confirmed 1,108 cases infected with the variant have been identified on Dec 13th. Maria Van Kerkhove, leader of WHO’s COVID-19 campaign, said that the only thing they recognized so far is the faster transmissible rate of the new variant of coronavirus. A thorough study is needed in the coming weeks.
“As we speak here today, the scientists in the lab are working on these types of studies…and we expect results from those studies in the coming days and coming weeks,” she said.
Though the U.K. has turned green light for COVID-19, studies on the virus need to be continued. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said that the U.K. developed an in-depth study about new variant of coronavirus after noticing a decent increasing amount of new infected cases of coronavirus in 14 days. From 100 cases per 100,000 in early October to 400 cases per 100,000 in December, the U.K. observed a huge change in just two months.
Nonetheless, Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s health emergencies program, assured that we could stop the transmission of new variant as long as we apply the social distancing correctly.
“We need to stop all SARS-CoV-2 transmission,” he said. “It’s the same rules with this virus [and] any variant of this virus, and we must focus on what we can do, and what we do know, rather than on what we don’t know.”
In Australia, Italy, Iceland, and the Netherlands, new variant of coronavirus has also been found.
The current number of infected cases globally is 77,188,346, with 1,699,085 deaths. 2020 has been such a bad year of everything, and perhaps, the nightmare can be extended.