LONDON – As nation after nation rushed this week to close its borders with Britain, the measures brought back memories of how the world reacted after the coronavirus emerged widely in the spring. Most of these early travel bans came too late, implemented after the virus had already spread to communities around the world.
This time, with countries trying to prevent the spread of a new, possibly more contagious coronavirus variant identified by Britain, it may also be too late. It is not known to what extent the variant is already circulating, experts say, and the bans threaten to cause more economic and emotional difficulties as the number of victims caused by the virus continues to grow.
“It’s stupid” was the direct assessment of Dr. Peter Kremsner, director of the University Hospital in Tübingen, Germany. “If this mutant was only on the island, only then would it make sense to close the borders with England, Scotland and Wales. But if it has spread, then we have to fight the new mutant everywhere. “
He noted that the scientific understanding of the mutation was limited and its dangers unknown, and he described as naive the notion that the variant was no longer spreading widely outside Britain.
In addition, Britain has some of the most sophisticated genomic surveillance efforts in the world, which has enabled scientists there to discover the variant when it might have gone unnoticed elsewhere, experts say.
Dr Hans Kluge, regional director of the World Health Organization for Europe, said that Member States would try to present a coherent approach to any threat posed by the variant. At the moment, he wrote on twitter, “Limiting travel to contain the spread is prudent until we have better information”.
But he noted: “no one is safe until everyone is safe”.
With growing calls for the United States to join dozens of nations that ban travel from Britain, Dr. Anthony Fauci, America’s leading infectious disease specialist, urged caution, saying there was a good chance the variant was already be there.
“I don’t think that kind of draconian approach is necessary,” he told PBS NewsHour on Monday night. “I think we should seriously consider requiring people to be tested before they come here from the UK.”
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo of New York said British Airways, Delta Air Lines and Virgin Atlantic had agreed to demand a negative coronavirus test for passengers boarding flights from Britain to New York. In the absence of federal action, other state and local leaders called for similar measures before the peak days of vacation travel.
Many countries already require a negative coronavirus test for entry, but cutting all travel between nations is a more worrying proposition.
The European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, has urged members of the bloc to lift general bans on Britain so that essential travel can take place. But for now, nations seem to prefer to set their own rules.
At the end of Tuesday, France backed down on closing a border, announcing on Sunday that it had arrested more than 1,000 truck drivers. Now, he says, selected groups of people could cross the border if they had recently been tested for the virus.
The situation is convulsing a travel industry already hit by the pandemic, forcing millions to change their vacation plans and injecting a new dose of anxiety at the end of a gloomy year.
At the same time, a separate variant of the virus is causing concern as it spreads across South Africa. At least five nations – Germany, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland and Turkey – have barred travelers from South Africa.
Sweden blocked travel from Denmark after reports that the British variant was detected there. And Saudi Arabia went even further, suspending all international air travel to the kingdom for at least a week.
The South African variant became the subject of intense scientific research after doctors discovered that people infected with it carry a high viral load – a higher concentration of the virus in their upper respiratory tract. In many viral diseases, this is associated with more severe symptoms.
As it is not known to what extent the two variants are spreading, it is impossible to assess what effects attempts to isolate Britain and South Africa will have on their containment.
With its sophisticated genomic surveillance efforts, Britain has sequenced some 150,000 coronavirus genomes in an effort to identify mutations. This represents about half of the world’s genomic data on the virus, said Sharon Peacock, director of the Covid-19 Genomics UK Consortium and professor of microbiology at the University of Cambridge.
“If you are going to find something anywhere, you will probably find it here first,” said Professor Peacock. “If this occurs in places that do not have sequencing, you will not find it at all,” she added, unless they have done other tests that have proved useful in identifying the variant.
In Wales, a country of three million people, geneticists sequenced more coronavirus genomes last week than scientists examined throughout the pandemic in France, a country of 67 million people, said Thomas Connor, a professor specializing in variation of pathogens at Cardiff University.
“Similar variants are likely to be emerging around the world,” he said. “And there are variants that are probably emerging elsewhere that are spreading locally and that would be completely ignored because there is no sequencing in place.”
British officials said the first case of the variant now spreading widely in the country was detected in Kent, southeastern England, on September 20. In November, about a quarter of the cases in London – a center of international trade – involved the new variant. Just a few weeks later, it is estimated that the variant accounts for almost two-thirds of the cases in Greater London.
This means that by the time Prime Minister Boris Johnson addressed the nation on Saturday night to announce new severe blocking measures for millions of people in and around London, the variant had been spreading for months.
French and German officials acknowledged on Tuesday that the variant may already be circulating in their countries. The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control said that some cases with the new variant were detected in Denmark, Iceland and the Netherlands. And health officials in Australia and Italy have reported cases of travelers from Britain.
Those who support travel bans said they could play a role in reducing the number of cases of new variants.
“Numbers are important,” Emma Hodcroft, a researcher at the University of Bern, Switzerland, wrote on Twitter. “The number of people with the new variant in continental Europe is probably still small: with testing, tracking, identification and restrictions, we can prevent them from transmitting the virus.”
If the variant proves to be significantly more contagious than others in circulation and becomes more widespread, it could complicate global vaccination efforts.
Dr. Ugur Sahin, co-founder of BioNTech, who, with Pfizer, developed the first approved vaccine in the West to fight coronavirus, warned that it would be two weeks before the full results of the laboratory studies would allow a more complete understanding of how mutations can alter the effectiveness of the vaccine.
“We believe there is no cause for concern until we get the data,” he said.
If an adapted vaccine was needed, it could be ready in six weeks, Sahin told a news conference on Tuesday. But that would require additional approval from regulators, which could increase waiting times, he said.
He also said that a more efficient virus would make it more difficult to reach the levels of immunity needed to end the pandemic.
“If the virus becomes more efficient at infecting people,” he said, “an even higher vaccination rate may be needed to ensure that normal life can continue without interruption.”
Melissa Eddy contributed reports from Berlin and Benjamin Mueller from London.