The European Union is goin to impose a complete ban on air travel from the southern African region amid rising concern about a new Covid-19 variant detected in South Africa.
“The Commission will propose to activate the emergency brake to stop air travel from the southern African region due to the variant of concern B.1.1.529,” EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said in a tweet on Friday.
The executive Commission will recommend that all 27 member states implement the measure and hopes for the European Council to give the green light as soon as possible, an EU official added.
Decisions of the European Council, which represents member states, do not have to be taken by ministers but can also be signed off by the country’s ambassadors in Brussels.
Italy is banning entry to those who have been in South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Namibia or Swaziland in the past fortnight due to fears over a new coronavirus variant.
Health Minister Roberto Speranza said scientists were studying the new B.1.1.529 variant, “and in the meantime, we will follow the path of maximum caution”.
Israel has identified a case of a Covid-19 variant with a large number of mutations first detected in South Africa.
“The variant discovered in southern African states has been identified in Israel,” the health ministry said on Friday.
The case was recorded “in a person who returned from Malawi,” with “two more cases of people returning from abroad” placed in quarantine, it added.
Britain says that a newly identified coronavirus variant spreading in South Africa was considered by scientists to be the most significant one yet found and so it needed to ascertain whether or not it made vaccines ineffective.
Defending a ban on flights from South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Eswatini, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said that the lesson of Covid was that early action was essential.
The UK Health Security Agency said that the variant – called B.1.1.5 29 – has a spike protein that was dramatically different to the one in the original coronavirus that Covid-19 vaccines are based on.
The variant has also been found in Botswana and Hong Kong, but the UK Health Security Agency said that no cases of the variant had been detected in Britain.
Britain’s decision to ban flights from South Africa because of the detection of a new Covid-19 variant “seems to have been rushed”, South Africa’s foreign ministry has said.
“Our immediate concern is the damage that this decision will cause to both the tourism industries and businesses of both countries,” South Africa’s Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor said in a statement.
South Africa will engage with British authorities to try to get them to reconsider their decision, the statement added. South Africa has requested an urgent sitting of a World Health Organization working group on virus evolution on Friday to discuss the new variant.
