UK and France work to help truckers, ease food shortages

LONDON — Britain and France inched closer Tuesday to a deal that wouldallow freight trucks to resume traveling between the two countries, raising hopes of relief for hundreds of drivers stuck near British ports and for supermarkets warning that they could soon run short of fruit and vegetables.

France closed its border for 48 hours Sunday night, fearing the spread of a new and possibly more transmissible variant of the coronavirus in Britain. That left more than 1,500 trucks stranded in the southeast as the Port of Dover and the Eurotunnel were shut to outbound traffic. Some drivers slept in their trucks for two nights.

As talks to break the impasse continued, France was expected to reopen its borders, but only to French nationals, residents and workers like truck drivers, and only to those able to supply evidence of a recent negative test, according to France Info, a public radio station. All other travelers coming from Britain would be allowed in under the plan only if they had a permanent residence in France.

An agreement between France and Britain for reopening the border would stave off the fears that had arisen of shortages of lettuce, broccoli and citrus fruit in British shops. Even though trucks from France were still allowed to bring such goods into Britain, few chose to cross the border amid fears that drivers would get marooned there.

The negotiations came as the European Union urged member states to step back from the draconian travel bans imposed in recent days.

The bloc’s executive urged countries to continue discouraging nonessential travel to and from Britain, but said that British and other European citizens should be allowed to return to their homes and that goods should be allowed to move back and forth.

Many scientists suspect that the new variant is already in continental Europe. They stressed that travel bans were useful only if such measures gave countries time to minimize the spread of the virus within their borders and ramp up efforts to detect it.

The discovery of the variant had led in recent days to a lockdown across much of southeastern England, and bans on flights and trains between Britain and dozens of countries as they tried to stop the variant from spreading.

Meanwhile, German pharmaceutical company BioNTech is confident its coronavirus vaccine works against the new UK variant, but more studies are needed to be sure, its chief executive said Tuesday. The variant has sparked concern worldwide because of signs that it may spread more easily.

“We don’t know at the moment if our vaccine is also able to provide protection against this new variant,” Ugur Sahin told a news conference the day after the vaccine was approved for use in the European Union. “But scientifically, it is highly likely that the immune response by this vaccine also can deal with the new virus variants.”

Sahin said that the proteins on the UK variant are 99% the same as on the prevailing strains, and therefore BioNTech has “scientific confidence” that its vaccine will be effective.

“But we will know it only if the experiment is done, and we will need about two weeks from now to get the data,” he said. “The likelihood that our vaccine works ... is relatively high.”