South Africa, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia, together with Zimbabwe, until Sunday. British and Irish citizens or residents arriving from these countries after 4am Sunday, will also be required to will be required to book and pay for a government-approved hotel quarantine facility for 10 days, while any other individual who has been in those countries over the past 10 days will be denied entry to the UK.
The regulations were announced on account of a new Coronavirus variant detected in South Africa, known as B.1.1.529, which was identified to have a high number of mutations and rapid spread among younger individuals in the country’s most populous province of Gauteng. While scientists in the country are working to determine the proportion of new infections caused by the new variant, many believe it is responsible for the recent spike in cases, with one expert describing the new mutation as “the worst one we’ve seen so far”.
British Health Secretary Sajid Javid noted that the six African nations were added to the red list in order to be “cautious”, taking necessary measures to try and protect the borders of the United Kingdom “as best we can”. He further noted that the new variant may be more transmissible than the presently dominant delta strain, and that the current vaccines that we have “may well be less effective” against it.
According to Tulio de Oliveira from Network for Genomic Surveillance in South Africa, the new variant has a “constellation” of new mutations, including more than 30 to the spike protein, which raises concerns for “predicted immune evasion and transmissibility”. “We can see that the variant is potentially spreading very fast. We do expect to start seeing pressure in the healthcare system in the next few days and weeks,” he said.
Following a period of relatively low number of new COVID infections, South Africa reported over 200 new cases each day over the past few week. On Wednesday, they shot up to more than 1200, and on Thursday to 2465.
