Australia announced today that it is investigating a new variant of COVID-19 that is spreading in South Africa and warned that it may close its borders to travelers from the African country, in case it faces the risk of increasing the transmission of the new variant strain.
Scientists in South Africa are worried that the new variant of the coronavirus could overcome the body’s immune response and make the coronavirus more contagious, as it has an “unusual storm of variants”.
Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt said he would react quickly if the World Health Organization (WHO) classified the new variant as a major variant of the coronavirus strain.
Annoyed by the new variant, Britain temporarily banned all flights from South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Swaziland from today and asked British tourists returning from these countries to enter. in quarantine.
British health officials say the new variant could reduce the effectiveness of vaccines, as it contains a protein that is different from the one the coronavirus had at the start of the pandemic and on which the vaccines were based.
According to the WHO, it will take “a few weeks” to understand the consequences of the new variant.
Australia earlier this month eased restrictions on its international borders for the first time since the pandemic began, allowing fully vaccinated residents to return to the country without quarantine after vaccination rates increase.
Australia has largely been able to tackle infections effectively for most of 2021, until the late June outbreak of the highly transmitted Delta variant, as the variant strain spread rapidly to the east of the country.
About 205,000 cases of infection and 1,985 deaths have been reported so far, lower than several other countries in the developed world.
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