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 India, Poland, Switzerland, Russia and Hong Kong suspended travel
for Britons after Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned that a mutated
variant of the virus up to 70% more infectious had been identified
in the country, while Japan and South Korea said they were
monitoring the situation.
A slew of countries have already suspended travel, including France,
Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Ireland, Belgium, Israel
and Canada.
The discovery of the new strain, just months before vaccines are
expected to be widely available, sowed fresh panic in a pandemic
that has killed about 1.7 million people worldwide and more than
67,000 in Britain.
Australia said two people who travelled from the United Kingdom to
New South Wales state were found to be carrying the mutated virus.
Johnson will chair an emergency response meeting on Monday to
discuss international travel, in particular the flow of freight in
and out of Britain. EU officials held a meeting on coordinating
their response.
France shut its border to arrivals of people and trucks from
Britain, closing off one of the most important trade arteries with
mainland Europe.
As families and truck drivers tried to navigate the travel bans to
get back home in time for Christmas, Britain's second-largest
supermarket chain, Sainsbury's, said gaps would start to appear on
shelves within days if transport ties were not quickly restored with
mainland Europe.
"If nothing changes, we will start to see gaps over the coming days
on lettuce, some salad leaves, cauliflowers, broccoli and citrus
fruit – all of which are imported from the continent at this time of
year," Sainsbury's said.
Shellfish producers in Scotland said they had tonnes of perishable
products stranded on roads as the French border was closed.
Disruption in Britain will also snarl supplies to Ireland.
"No driver wants to deliver to the UK now, so the UK is going to see
its freight supply dry up," France's FNTR national road haulage
federation said.
The global alarm was reflected in financial markets.
European shares slumped, with travel and leisure stocks bearing the
brunt of the pain; British Airways-owner IAG and easyJet fell about
8%, while Air France KLM lost about 7%.
The British pound tumbled 2.5% against the dollar, and was on course
for its biggest one-day drop since March, while the yield on
two-year UK government bonds hit a record low.
Britain's tabloids bemoaned the crisis.
"Sick Man of Europe", the Daily Mirror newspaper said on its front
page beside a picture of Johnson while the Sun newspaper said
"French show no merci".
NEW MUTATION
Johnson cancelled Christmas plans for millions of British people on
Saturday due to the more infectious strain of the coronavirus,
though he said there was no evidence that it was either more lethal
or caused a more severe illness.
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 The new variant contains 23
different changes, many of them associated with
how it binds to cells and enters them. British
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said Britain
had done some of the best global analysis of the
mutations of the virus so it was simply seeing
what was already at large in other countries.
Shapps said getting the bans lifted as swiftly as possible was his
priority but that given British preparations for the end of the
Brexit transition period on Dec. 31, the country was well positioned
for disruption.
The British government triggered plans it had for stacking up trucks
in the southeast county of Kent - part of its plans for potential
disruption when the United Kingdom exits the EU's orbit with - or
without - a trade deal at 2300 GMT on Dec. 31. Talks
on a Brexit trade deal were due to continue on Monday.
"This is a serious situation as the stockpiled goods expected here
are for Christmas and to help stabilise January," Jon Swallow, a
director of the British logistics group Jordon Freight, told
Reuters.
"This shows how fragile the cross-channel route is."
ASIAN INFECTIONS
The new virus strain has been identified in Britain at a time when
COVID-19 cases have surged in several Asian countries that had
previously successfully contained the pandemic. The spikes have
prompted localised lockdowns in some countries and more aggressive
testing.
South Korea, which imposes a 14-day quarantine on everyone entering
the country, said it was reviewing new measures for flights from
Britain, and would test twice those coming in from there before they
were released from quarantine.
New cases climbed to over 1,000 a day in South Korea several times
last week. It reported on Sunday an outbreak in a Seoul prison where
188 inmates and staff were infected.
Thailand said on Sunday it was testing tens of thousands of people,
and extended curbs on movement, following its worst outbreak yet
that began at a market in a province that is a centre of the seafood
industry and home to thousands of migrant workers.
Australia, where cases in Sydney have flared in recent days,
cancelled dozens of domestic flights on Monday. New South Wales,
which has reported 86 new local cases since Thursday, ordered more
than a 250,000 people into a lockdown, though officials stressed the
infections were not the UK strain.
(Additional reporting by Toby Melville and James Davey in London,
Laurence Frost in Paris; Sayantani Ghosh in Singapore, Josh Smith
and Sangmi Cha in Seoul, Renju Jose in Sydney, Shilpa Jamkhandikar
in Mumbai and Farah Master in Hong Kong; Writing by Guy
Faulconbridge and Pravin Char; Editing by Alison Williams)
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