Countries around the world moved to restrict travel from southern Africa on Friday in a frantic effort to keep a newly identified, and apparently significantly evolved, variant of the coronavirus from crossing their borders.
The European Commission proposed to that its members to activate the “emergency brake” on travel from countries in southern African and other countries affected to limit the spread of the new variant.
“All air travel to these countries should be suspended until we have a clear understanding about the danger posed by this new variant,” the commission said in a news release. “And travelers returning from this region should respect strict quarantine rules.”
In the past, governments have taken days, weeks or months to issue travel restrictions in response to new variants. This time, restrictions came within hours of South Africa’s announcement — at least 10 countries around the world had announced measures before South African scientists had finished a meeting with World Health Organization experts about the variant on Friday.
The countries that halted flights from South Africa included Bahrain, Belgium, Britain, Croatia, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Malta, the Netherlands and Singapore.
There is no proof yet that the variant could diminish the protective power of the vaccines, but uncertainty on that question was one factor in the speed of countries’ move toward restrictions.
The new variant, initially called B.1.1.529, has a “very unusual constellation of mutations,” according to Tulio de Oliveira, director of the KwaZulu-Natal Research and Innovation Sequencing Platform. On the protein that helps to create an entry point for the coronavirus to infect human cells, the new variant has 10 mutations, many more than the…