 Travel
ban over Brazilian variant precautionary, UK transport minister says
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[January 15, 2021]
LONDON (Reuters) - A Brazilian variant of
the coronavirus is significant enough to justify stopping flights from
South America as a precaution, British transport minister Grant Shapps
said on Friday, as a leading scientist said it had been detected in
Britain.
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 Britain will ban arrivals from South American countries and Portugal
because of concerns over a new Brazilian variant of the coronavirus.
The Brazilian variant shares some characteristics with those found
in Britain and South Africa, which are believed by scientists to be
more transmissible but not to cause more severe disease.
"As with the variant that we saw in Kent (southern England)or the
one in South Africa, it's significantly enough of interest to us
just to take this precautionary approach of stopping all those
flights from Brazil (and) South America," Shapps told Sky News.
"Our scientists aren't saying that the vaccine won't work against
it... (but) we do not want to be tripping up at this last moment (of
vaccine rollout) which is why I took the decision as an extra
precaution to ban those flights."
Shapps later said scientists believed vaccines would work on the
Brazilian variant, going further than the government's chief
scientific adviser Patrick Vallance.
Vallance on Wednesday said there wasn't evidence vaccines wouldn't
work but said the Brazilian variant was more of a risk and "we don't
know" if it would affect the immune response.
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 A leading British virologist
said the Brazilian variant had been traced in
Britain.
"There are two different types of Brazilian
variants and one of them has been detected (in
the UK) and one of them has not," Wendy Barclay,
virologist at Imperial College London, told
journalists, adding it was "early days" in the
understanding of the variants.
Along with UK and South African variants, the
Brazilian variant is "of concern" and would be
"traced very carefully," she said.
(Reporting by Alistair Smout and Kate Kelland;
editing by Michael Holden and James Davey)
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