Canada, Italy, Ireland, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Turkey and Belgium have banned flights to the United Kingdom in a bid to limit spread of the new variant that has quickly spread in London and south-east England.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson recently introduced a new tier four level of restrictions for the areas affected by the new variant and has scrapped a planned easing down of rules over the Christmas period for the people of Britain.
Health officials in the UK have revealed that there was no proof to show that the new variant was more dangerous or would react in a different way to vaccines but the new variant was proving to be up to 70% more transmissible.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock disclosed that the new strain “was out of control”, as such, it has to be under control. He admitted that this was “an incredibly difficult end to frankly an awful year.”
Meanwhile, the Government of Canada is highly monitoring the contagious variant of the COVID-19 causing virus that was identified in the United Kingdom and is liaising with international partners in a bid to understand the variant and its impacts better.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has called a meeting of the Incident Response Group to deliberate on the new variant of COVID-19 prevalent in the United Kingdom. Minister of Health, Patty Hajdu; Minister of Foreign Affairs, François-Philippe Champagne; Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, Bill Blair, Minister of Transport Marc Garneau, and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs Dominic LeBlanc were attended the meeting.
