It’s time for Plan B: PM orders tests for travellers hours after new variant reaches UK
Concern over Covid strain
Boris Johnson last night tightened Covid restrictions hours after the first cases of a worrying new variant were confirmed in the UK.
The Prime Minister ordered testing for travellers arriving in Britain by air and reintroduced wider use of masks in England after two cases of the variant, named Omicron, were identified in Essex and Nottingham.
Both cases are linked to each other and to travel to southern Africa where the variant originated. It has caused concern among scientists and health officials worried it may be better protected against existing vaccines.
Johnson had previously rejected calls to tighten restrictions, the so-called Plan B, in England but at a hastily-arranged Downing Street briefing, said the uncertainty around the impact of vaccines on the new strain meant more precautions were needed.
All travellers arriving to the UK will now be required to self-isolate until getting a negative PCR test, even if they are vaccinated.
Johnson also announced a return of compulsory face coverings in shops and on public transport in England, a measure that was never dropped in Scotland where Nicola Sturgeon said Scots should act as if the new variant is already here.
Omicron, named after a letter of the Greek alphabet to avoid stigmatising countries where variants are first found, has been classified as a highly transmittable virus of concern by the World Health Organisation.
It could be weeks before the variant is fully understood but it is feared Omicron may spread more rapidly than the predominant Delta variant and current vaccines may be less effective against it. Manufacturers say it could be 100 days before new vaccines are ready but remain confident Omicron can be effectively controlled.
Johnson said: “We don’t yet exactly know how effective our vaccines will be against Omicron but we have
The West has only itself to blame if new dangerous variants emerge from developing countries after failing to fairly distribute vaccine around the world, Gordon Brown said yesterday.
The former Labour PM said it is no surprise that new variant Omicron was discovered in South Africa earlier this week, and warned new variants are developing because richer countries are hoarding vaccines.
Brown said health leaders had given the government repeated warnings that new variants could develop due to a lack of vaccines for poorer countries. He said: “In the absence of mass vaccination, Covid is not only spreading uninhibited among unprotected people but is mutating, with new variants emerging out of the poorest countries and now threatening to unleash themselves on even fully vaccinated people in the richest countries in the world.”
Fewer than 6% of people in Africa have been fully immunised against Covid-19. Brown said the UK’S failure to deliver 100 million vaccines, of which it has so far donated 11%, is “probably the biggest international public policy failure of our times”.