(Last Updated on December 15, 2021 by zimdaily)
ENGLAND – The United Kingdom will remove 11 African countries including Zimbabwe from its red list of travel restrictions from 4AM on Wednesday. This follows the acceptance that new Covid-19 variant Omicron can no longer be contained.
The travel restrictions had caused travel chaos for thousands of travellers who were stranded.
BBC News reports that countries on the red list require a mandatory 10-day hotel quarantine. The Southern African countries are Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Sajid Javid, the UK health secretary, said that the red list no longer served a purpose.
Addressing the House of Commons last week, Sajid Javid said:
“If, as I think is likely, we see many more infections and this variant becomes the dominant variant, there will be less need to have any kind of travel restrictions at all.”
Following the discovery of the new Covid-19 variant that was detected in Botswana and South Africa, Britain had suspended flights from southern African countries.
UK experts believe the new variant, B.1.1.529 can reduce the effectiveness of vaccines to as little as 30 per cent.
The UK Health Security Agency said that the variant has a spike protein that is dramatically different to the one in the original coronavirus that Covid-19 vaccines are based on.
It is also believed to have 32 mutations that are likely to evade the immune response generated both by prior infection and vaccination.
[bbc]