‘Red List’ quarantine returns and flights banned from six Southern African countries

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• Doug says:

  25 Nov25 November 21:40

  I had my South Africa trip booked for May, hope that things change by then

  • Amy C says:

    25 Nov25 November 21:53

    Ditto. I am not holding my breath.

  • Amy C says:

    25 Nov25 November 21:54

    This all seemed to happen so quickly. Don’t know if I can stand the stress of going, if it’s possible, then finding myself having to get to an airport with 12 hours notice to avoid quarantine from middle of no where 😔

  • Jonathan says:

    25 Nov25 November 21:59

    Wouldn’t bank on it. They were talking about 90% of the cases in Gauteng.

    Once community transmission is occurring freely then the genie is well & truly out of the bottle. Who knows where this leads, potentially a short sharp burst of increased morbidity/mortality, along the lines of SARS/MERS, which then burns itself out or further increased transmissibility but remaining low in the virulence stakes. Natural selection will generally favour the latter.

    Definitely the right call to take no chances though.

    • Jonathan says:

      25 Nov25 November 22:03

      My first paragraph has been mangled for some reason but I was saying how it’s gone from 5 known cases on Wednesday to now being 90% of cases in Gauteng based on rapid sequencing results.

  • Tim says:

    25 Nov25 November 23:04

    I suspect that thingay be ok by May. Or rather the varient will have established itself here by then making quarantine pointless. This is about delaying not preventing the introduction of a new varient to push it beyond the winter and give us time to acquire updated vaccines.

• Daniel says:

  25 Nov25 November 21:43

  And here we go again…

  • TGLoyalty says:

    25 Nov25 November 22:08

    Scariant part 15

    • Daniel says:

      25 Nov25 November 23:06

      I am ready for my 7th jab because I am gullible.

      • TGLoyalty says:

        26 Nov26 November 00:28

        The more you have the less likely you are to catch and spread it

        Though you’ll probably still catch it and if you do you’ll deffo spread it

    • Tim says:

      25 Nov25 November 23:06

      This one is more scary Than previous varients. But the real scary thing is that it was probably only found because SA does a lot of sequencing. They have expertise in that as a legacy of the HIV epidemic I believe.

      • yorkieflyer says:

        25 Nov25 November 23:26

        indeed, South Africa is one of the few countries testing for variants to a degree, how many more variants are out there not detected that burn themselves out. Altogether very bad news for the winter long haul holiday market

• Aston100 says:

  25 Nov25 November 21:55

  I was hoping to go there Xmas 2022.
  Hopefully just a temporary measure.

• BuildBackBetter says:

  25 Nov25 November 22:01

  Didn’t know there was a country called Eswatini.

  • Bagoly says:

    26 Nov26 November 06:54

    When I first saw it, I thought they were jumping on the e- bandwagon.

• Aston100 says:

  25 Nov25 November 22:08

  What’s the situation with vaccine roll out in South Africa? Too lazy to Google it

• Bill says:

  25 Nov25 November 22:11

  I know a family of 2 adults and 2 children that have flights booked for Christmas this year…..

• J says:

  25 Nov25 November 22:17

  I expect this and other variants exist elsewhere anyway, it’s just that South Africa have done a better job of detecting and reporting on it. I believe like the UK they do a lot more sequencing.

  • David D says:

    26 Nov26 November 10:11

    Spot on

• Harry Holden says:

  25 Nov25 November 22:45

  The UK government are trying to make up for closing down too late following the discovery of previous variants (India trade deal anyone) by being really punctual this time. Here’s hoping it is a precautious over reaction.

  • Lady London says:

    26 Nov26 November 00:48

    If it’s summer in South Africa now then this new nasty variant is really going to take off when it reaches loverly cold Europe + UK.

    I feel sorry for all the airlines who will now be holding their breath to see how far this one gets.

    • J says:

      26 Nov26 November 06:56

      The UK is in Europe.

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