Future Timeline

European Union states have agreed to suspend temporarily travel to southern Africa after the detection of a new Covid-19 variant.

A committee of health experts from all 27 EU states "agreed on the need to activate the #emergency break & impose temporary restriction on all travel into EU from southern Africa," the Slovenian presidency of the EU said on Twitter.

An EU source told Reuters that the restrictions would apply to South Africa, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia and Zimbabwe.

It comes as a case of the 'nu' Covid variant was identified in Belgium, with laboratories in the country increasing their vigilance to catch the potentially more transmissible strain.

A patient returning from Egypt, via Turkey, contracted the variant of concern, according to the National Reference Laboratory, which sent a nationwide communication to raise urgency over passengers arriving from South Africa.

Two possible cases were analysed on Friday, with one identified as a delta variant and the other the new B.1.1.529 strain.

Xyls wrote: ↑Fri Nov 26, 2021 6:47 pm BioNTech Says It will Take 100 Days to Tweak Vaccine to Match Spike if this is an escape variant

https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 ... -if-needed

They will know this in about 2 weeks.

We really need to dramatically accelerate the distribution of vaccines to Africa. And if the virus is mutating faster where AIDS is present more AIDS relief needs to be directed to Africa.

andmar74 wrote: ↑Fri Nov 26, 2021 7:11 pm Take it easy. We don't know how dangerous Omicron is. Also we don't know how well protected we are with current vaccines. Too early.