Covid-19 doesn’t seem to be letting up. A number of flights set to depart from the UK to parts of Europe have been halted as a new Covid-19 variant continues to spread.
The UK government has imposed a Tier4 lockdown in London and southeastern England according to CNN. Restrictions have also been tightened for all of England during the Christmas holiday season.
The Netherlands is banning all passenger flights coming from the United Kingdom from Sunday morning until the new year in order to minimize the risk of the new strain from spreading in the the country “as much as possible”, the government said in a press release.
The Dutch government said the same variant of the virus had been detected in the Netherlands in a sample from a case from early December, and that it is conducting further investigations to determine if there are any other related cases. Meanwhile, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said that Belgium will block travelers from the UK for 24 hours on Monday as a “precautionary measure,” though the ban could be extended if necessary.
Italy will also suspend flights to and from the United Kingdom, according to Foreign Affairs Minister Luigi Di Maio on Sunday, who did not say when the ban would come into place, or for how long.
The United Kingdom today broke its daily coronavirus case record, recording 35,928 new cases.