(Brussels) A new variant of COVID-19 in South Africa and the borders are closing: several European countries decided on Friday to suspend flights from southern Africa, other nations, such as Japan, establishing a quarantine.
Potentially very contagious and with multiple mutations, the detection of this new variant of COVID-19 was announced Thursday in South Africa.
Despite recommendations from the World Health Organization (WHO), which advised against taking travel restriction measures, Britain, France and the Netherlands have banned flights from South Africa. South and five neighboring countries as of Friday noon.
Decisions deemed “hasty” by the South African government, and which constitute a new blow for tourism, just before the southern summer when animal parks and hotels are normally full.
“Our immediate concern is the damage this decision will cause to tourism industries and businesses,” South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor said in a statement.
The European Commission is to propose in the afternoon to the Member States to activate the emergency brake to interrupt air travel from southern Africa.
Fall of world stock markets
European teams in the United Rugby Championship want to leave South Africa, where they were to play the 6e day of the championship which brings together Scottish, Welsh, Italian, Irish and South African clubs.
And about fifteen British and Irish players have withdrawn from the rest of the Johannesburg Open, counting towards the European golf circuit, which started on Thursday.
Fears related to this new variant, detected at a time when health restrictions are causing social tensions and mistrust of vaccination persists, have caused oil prices to drop and led to sharp drops in world stock markets.
Tokyo lost 2.53% at the close and Frankfurt and London more than 3% at the opening. The flagship CAC 40 index of the Paris Bourse fell 3.33% at 6:10 am (EST).
Italy has already banned its territory on Friday from anyone who has stayed in southern Africa “during the last 14 days”. In Asia, Singapore announced a similar ban effective Sunday, except for its nationals and residents.
In Germany, where the threshold of 100,000 deaths attributed to COVID-19 was crossed on Thursday, only German citizens will be allowed to return from South Africa from Friday evening, and on the condition of respecting a quarantine of 14 days , even if they are vaccinated, announced the outgoing German Minister of Health Jens Spahn.
“The last thing we need now is the introduction of a new variant which causes even more problems”, justified the German minister. Some German hospitals are saturated and the debate on a compulsory vaccination for all in Germany, as Austria has just decided, is on the table.
“Potential for very rapid spread”
It will take “several weeks” to understand the level of transmissibility and virulence of the new variant detected in South Africa and named B.1.1529, a WHO spokesperson said on Friday.
To date, 22 cases have been reported, mostly affecting young people, according to the South African National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD). Cases have also been reported in neighboring Botswana and Hong Kong, on a person returning from a trip to South Africa.
Israel also announced a case of this new variant: “This is a person returned from Malawi,” said the Israeli Ministry of Health, expressing fears “two more cases of people returned from abroad” and placed in confinement.
These three people were vaccinated against COVID-19, the Ministry of Health said in its press release without specifying the number of doses or the type of vaccine.
At this point, South African scientists are unsure of the effectiveness of existing vaccines against the new form of the virus.
The new variant has an “extremely high” number of mutations and “we can see that it has a potential for very rapid spread,” virologist Tulio de Oliveira explained Thursday, during a press briefing from the South African ministry of health.
” Immune system ”
His team from the KRISP research institute, backed by the University of Kwazulu-Natal, had already discovered the highly contagious Beta variant last year.
In South Africa, officially the most affected country on the continent by the virus, 23.8% of the inhabitants are fully vaccinated.
Metamorphosis of the initial virus can potentially make it more transmissible, to the point of making the variant dominant. “What concerns us is that this variant may not only have an increased transmission capacity, but also be able to bypass parts of our immune system,” said another researcher, Professor Richard Lessells.
At the WHO, the experts responsible for monitoring the evolution of the virus giving COVID-19 must meet Friday at midday to determine the dangerousness of the new variant.
The German laboratory BioNTech, allied with Pfizer, explained to wait “at the latest in two weeks” the first results of studies which will make it possible to determine if the new variant detected in South Africa is able to escape the vaccine protection.
The novel coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 5.180 million people worldwide since the disease was detected in China at the end of December 2019, according to official figures. The WHO estimates, taking into account the excess mortality directly and indirectly linked to COVID-19, that the toll could be two to three times higher.