Flights from South Africa will be halted tomorrow as ministers and scientists become “deeply concerned” about a fast-spreading coronavirus variant.
Travel from South Africa and five other southern African countries will be banned from noon in an attempt to prevent the arrival in Britain of a variant that could evade vaccines.
The UK Health Security Agency believes that the variant is the most worrying they have seen, and could be a bigger concern than Delta, which led to new waves of infection around the world after its appearance last winter.
Sajid Javid, the health secretary, added Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) as well as South Africa to the travel red list in the hope of keeping out the variant before travel increases over Christmas.
About 500-700 people arrive from South Africa each day and everyone who has entered in the past ten days will be asked to take a test to see if the variant has reached Britain.
A senior airline source said that the move would be a “hammer blow” for the travel sector. The B.1.1.529 variant has a number of mutations that suggest it may escape immunity or transmit faster. In a sign of the seriousness with which it is being taken, the World Health Organisation is expected to designate the variant as the “Nu variant”, using the Greek number classification system.
Javid said: “The early indication we have of this variant is it may be more transmissible than the Delta variant and the vaccines that we currently have may be less effective against it.”
No cases have been confirmed in Britain and scientists say that they do not yet know whether the Nu variant can escape vaccines or spread faster than Delta. Javid said: “We’ve always been clear that we will take action to protect the progress that we have made.”