(WBEN/AP) - A growing list of European Union nations and Canada have barred flights from the U.K. to try to block a new strain of coronavirus apparently found in southern England from spreading to the continent.
France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland and Bulgaria all announced restrictions on U.K. travel hours after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that Christmas shopping and gatherings in southern England must be canceled. He blamed rapidly spreading infections in the region on the new coronavirus variant, which appears to be more transmissible than existing strains.
"Hearing news like that is concerning, but not surprising," said Dr. Joseph Chow, Medical Director at WNY Immediate Care. "We do know that viruses will shift. Thinking about the flu virus, we expect it to shift. It all depends on how much that shift is."
Governor Andrew Cuomo sounded the alarm about the change over the weekend, saying the US should follow suit with the countries banning incoming travel from the UK.
How concerned should we be?
"We absolutely need more information... is this one of those shifts, or is this one of these little drifts," Dr. Chow said. "Some of these drifts and changes within the virus itself we do expect to happen every single year. We need to have more information about that. How concerned we should be will really depend on that."
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is to chair a meeting of the government's emergency committee Monday. The meeting of the COBRA civil contingencies committee comes amid warnings of "significant disruption" around the ports in the English Channel with tailbacks going back miles in the southeastern English county of Kent. All this economic disruption comes at a time of huge uncertainty for the U.K., less than two weeks before it leaves the EU's tariff-free single market and customs union on Dec. 31.
