Backlash over new travel ban
Health chiefs and tourism bosses say it’s overreaction to latest strain
MINISTERS are poised to add more countries to the travel ‘red list’ as the threat to foreign winter holidays from the new ‘Botswana’ Covid variant grows.
Officials were considering whether to add Malawi and Mozambique to the ‘no-go’ list as soon as this weekend – amid criticism from blacklisted countries, the UN and travel bosses that Britain has overreacted.
South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Eswatini (formerly known as Swaziland) and Lesotho were added on Thursday night over growing fears about the variant. It came as the first European case of the ultra-infectious and potentially vaccine-busting new strain was confirmed in Belgium, leading to concerns of travel restrictions to countries outside Africa.
The Government’s move on Thursday night triggered a scramble among the up to 20,000 or so Britons who are in South Africa for leisure travel to return before 4am tomorrow. Anyone arriving back after this will be forced to quarantine in hotels for 11 nights at a cost of £2,285 per adult.
Ministers defended the move yesterday, saying it was a necessary ‘safety-first approach’ which would ‘buy time’ by stemming the import and spread of the variant.
But South Africa’s foreign minister Naledi Pandor hit out at the move, saying it ‘seems to have been rushed’. She added: ‘Our immediate concern is the damage this decision will cause to both the tourism industries and businesses of both countries.’
Officials at the World Health Organisation studying the new strain, officially named yesterday as the Omicron variant, suggested the border curbs were an overreaction.
‘At this point, implementing travel measures is being cautioned against,’ spokesman Christian Lindmeier said during a briefing at the UN agency’s headquarters in Geneva. He said it would be several weeks before scientists knew how much less effective vaccines are against the variant.
Travel bosses also reacted with anger. Paul Charles, chief of the PC Agency luxury travel consultancy, said: ‘It’s a complete overreaction. There’s no evidence at the moment that this variant has any impact on the vaccines.
‘It will now hit confidence and lead to lots of people being worried about Christmas holidays in South Africa and possibly elsewhere.’
Figures compiled for the Daily Mail by flight data analysts Cirium show 289 flights with 79,299 seats were scheduled to fly between the UK and South Africa next month.
Direct flights into the UK from the six African countries were banned from midday yesterday.
The red list will be reviewed again in two weeks, but Health Secretary Sajid Javid warned it is likely to be expanded in the coming days to include more countries with travel links to South Africa.
He told MPs the new variant potentially poses a ‘substantial risk to public health’. He said it is ‘highly likely’ the variant ‘has now spread to other countries’.
No cases have yet been detected in the UK. Three confirmed cases in Israel were in people who had travelled from Malawi. It has also been detected in Hong Kong.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said: ‘It is important to act immediately. That gives us a bit of time for the scientists to work on sequencing the genome... so we can find out how significant a concern this particular variant is. It is a safety-first approach... it’s about buying time.’
Boris Johnson spoke yesterday with South African president Cyril Ramaphosa. A No 10 spokesman said: ‘They discussed the challenges posed globally by the new Covid-19 variant, and ways to work together to deal with it and reopen international travel.’
The two leaders also ‘agreed to stay in close contact as we deal with the ongoing threat’.
Germany, Italy, France and the Netherlands followed the UK’s lead yesterday by restricting travel from South Africa and its neighbouring countries.
Ursula von der Leyen, the European Union’s top eurocrat, urged all the bloc’s leaders to do so. The US has also restricted flights from eight African countries.