The Government will be suspending all flights from six southern African countries from midday tomorrow and requesting PCR tests from those who have recently travelled there in an attempt to avoid the new variant.
Health secretary Sajid 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.
“Now, to be clear, we have not detected any of this new variant in the UK at this point in time.
“But we’ve always been clear that we will take action to protect the progress that we have made.
“So, what we will be doing is from midday tomorrow we will be suspending all flights from six southern African countries and we will add in those countries to the travel Red List.
“Those countries are South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Zimbabwe and Botswana.
“We will be requiring anyone that arrives from those countries from 4am on Sunday to quarantine in hotels.
“If anyone arrives before then they should self-isolate at home and take a PCR test on day two and day eight. And if anyone has arrived from any of those countries over the last 10 days, we would ask them to take PCR tests.”
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