The United Kingdom and the European Union have been quick to halt flights or require mandatory quarantine for returning residents/citizens from South Africa + some also from Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, and Eswatini.
The reason for this latest Covid-19 move is a new variant found in South Africa and select other countries that have double the number of mutations compared to the widely circulating delta causing havoc around the globe.
The governments try to assess whether the current vaccines efficiently block the B.1.1.529 variant that is spreading much faster in South Africa than in previous ones.
The UK is halting all the flights from South Africa, and they can resume next week once the government has mandatory hotel quarantine set up for arrivals.
The European Union has proposed that member states halt air travel from South Africa. Only German citizens and residents are allowed to enter the country from South Africa starting midnight on Friday. Some bloc countries are banning everyone entering who has been in South Africa and other Southern African nations for the past 14 days.
Conclusion
This covid-19 continuous to cause headache and havoc in various countries.
The infection numbers are way up in Europe just in time for the region’s critical Christmas and New Years’ holidays. As a result, countries are reintroducing lockdowns and other restrictions trying to limit the virus collapsing the healthcare sector.
This is a good reminder that it still doesn’t make much sense to purchase air travel much in advance. The situation and travel restrictions can change without very little advance notice.
I am supposed to meet friends in Paris, Lisbon, and Amsterdam right after Christmas, hoping that the situation won’t worsen in the next four weeks.
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My flight and hotels are booked in Cairo. I’m scheduled to go in about 2 weeks. The woman who flew back to Belgium and had contracted the Nu Variant was in Egypt! I’m waiting to see if Egypt gets on the list as I’m suppose to fly from there back to Dubai at the end of December. Lots of unknowns. But, it certainly looks like this By Variant is highly transmissible based on the surge in the last few weeks.
The SA B.1.1.529 is a very concerning variant of the already terrible CV-19. I type this at home, isolating after a business trip to Germany where I caught the Delta variant, having been triple vaccinated with my booster ~5 weeks ago. This is my second bought with CV-19, the first was almost a year ago to the day. It’s time to face the fact that the vaccines are not working. This is no joking matter.
I implore the authorities to go into a complete and total lockdown with no movement of people and all flights grounded for the next 2 weeks. We really don’t need another wave of a super contagious, vaccine-resistant variant. If we collectively act in a coordinated manner, we can nip this one in the bud before it spreads like wildfire.
You must be right. I have had all seven major vaccines and I’ve had coronavirus eleven times already. This is a VERY DANGEROUS DISEASE.