EU ambassadors to hold emergency meeting on UK new virus strain

Officials will discuss a coordinated response and travel restrictions for UK travellers

Dr. Moncef Slaoui, delivers an update on "Operation Warp Speed" in the at the White House in Washington, DC. AFP

EU ambassadors will hold a crisis meeting in Brussels on Monday on travel restrictions to Britain after a new coronavirus strain emerged there that is thought to be very infectious.

Several EU countries, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy and the Netherlands have announced the suspension of air links, and in some cases rail and ferry links, with the UK.
In most cases, the bans were effective from 11pm on Sunday and were to last a day or two as a precaution while the threat of the new strain was evaluated and a coordinated response was worked out.

An EU official said ambassadors from the 27 member states would meet Monday under the bloc's integrated political crisis response mechanism designed to swiftly react to crises. They would look at measures such as flight bans and the use of PCR coronavirus testing on travellers coming from Britain.

The meeting comes after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Saturday that he was imposing a severe lockdown on London and much of the south east because of the new virus variant.

Mr Johnson said the variant could be up to 70 per cent more infectious, based on preliminary data showing it had become the prevalent strain in the capital and that case numbers were rising despite boosted restrictions.

He and government medical officials said there were no indications the new variant was any more deadly or immune to vaccines that are starting to be used.

WHO in 'close contact with UK officials over virus variant'

The World Health Organisation said it was analysing Britain's data to see if its the runaway infection figures were the result of a more potent strain. The coronavirus has changed into many different variants as it has spread around the world - an expected result of interacting with different hosts with different biological responses.

No mutated virus has so far been proven to be more virulent than others or able to easily overcome the barriers, such as social distancing, facemasks and frequent hand-washing, which are currently recommended.

“What we understand is that it does have increased transmissibility, in terms of its ability to spread,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead on Covid-19. Studies are under way to better understand how fast it spreads and and whether “it’s related to the variant itself, or a combination of factors with behaviour,” she added.

Maria van Kerkhove, head of the Outbreak Investigation Task Force for the World Health Organization speaks during a news conference at the United Nations. AP

She said the strain had also been identified in Denmark, the Netherlands and Australia, where there was one case that didn’t spread further. “The longer this virus spreads, the more opportunities it has to change,” she said. “So we really need to do everything we can right now to prevent spread.”

Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, said officials are concerned about the new variant because it contained 23 different changes, “an unusually large number of variants” affecting how the virus binds to and enters cells in the body.

Officials aren’t certain whether it originated in the UK, Mr Vallance added. But by December, he said it was causing over 60 per cent of infections in London.

US looking 'very carefully' at new virus variant

US authorities are looking "very carefully" into the virus variant spreading in the United Kingdom, top health officials said on Sunday, while indicating that a ban on UK travel was not currently in the cards.

Moncef Slaoui, chief advisor to the government's Operation Warp Speed vaccine program, told CNN's "State of the Union" that US officials "don't know yet" if the variant is present in the country.

Dr. Moncef Slaoui, delivers an update on "Operation Warp Speed" in the at the White House in Washington, DC. AFP

"We are, of course... looking very carefully into this," including at the National Institutes of Health and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, he said. At the moment, he said, no strain of the virus appears to be resistant to the vaccines available.

"This particular variant in the UK, I think, is very unlikely to have escaped the vaccine immunity," Mr Slaoui said.

"I don't think there's any reason for alarm right now," agreed Admiral Brett Giroir, the US official overseeing coronavirus testing, when asked about the new variant on ABC's "The Week."

Asked whether the United States was likely to follow the example of European countries that have suspended flights from the United Kingdom, Mr Giroir replied: "I really don't believe we need to do that yet."

Nearly eight million more Covid-19 vaccine doses are to ship across the United States on Monday, Mr Slaoui told CNN. This is made up of two million of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and 5.9 million of the Moderna shot that was approved on Friday.