South Africa will go back onto England’s red list for international travel, along with five other African countries.
It is due to a new coronavirus variant emerging, which an official said is the ‘worst one we’ve seen so far’.
Flights from South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho, Botswana, Eswatini and Zimbabwe will be suspended from midday on Friday, Sajid Javid said tonight.
The Health Secretary said the new variant ‘may be more transmissible’ than the Delta strain and added ‘the vaccines that we currently have may be less effective’.
UK scientists sounded the alarm over the B.1.1.529 variant, which has the potential to evade immunity built up by vaccination or prior infection.
While no cases have been found in Britain, officials raised concern over a rapid rise in cases in South Africa.
Anyone who has arrived from the country in the last 10 days will be invited to take a coronavirus test.
The new variant, which could be officially named ‘Nu’ as early as tomorrow, has also been identified in Botswana and Hong Kong.
It carries 32 mutations, many of which suggest it is more resistant to vaccines and highly transmissible.
It has more alterations to its spike protein – a tool that helps a virus enter a cell – than any other variant so far.
At the moment, around 500 and 700 people are travelling to the UK from South Africa each day, but it is expected this figure could increase as the festive period begins.
Mr Javid said: ‘The early indication we have of this variant is it may be more transmissible than the Delta variant and the vaccines that we currently have may be less effective against it.
‘Now to be clear, we have not detected any of this new variant in the UK at this point in time.
‘But we’ve always been clear that we will take action to protect the progress that we have made.
‘So what we will be doing is from midday tomorrow we will be suspending all flights from six, southern African countries and we will add in those countries to the travel red list.
‘Those countries are South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Zimbabwe and Botswana. We will be requiring anyone that arrives from those countries from 4am on Sunday to quarantine in hotels.
‘If anyone arrives before then they should self-isolate at home and take a PCR test on day two and day eight. If anyone has arrived from any of those countries over the last 10 days, we would ask them to take PCR tests.’
The variant has not yet been given the title ‘variant of concern’ in the UK, but one senior UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) expert said: ‘This is the worst variant we have seen so far.”
Only 59 confirmed cases have been identified in South Africa, Hong Kong and Botswana.
However, scientists fear it may be more widespread than sequencing alone indicates, as it has already been ‘exported’ to Asia.
A 36-year-old man tested negative upon his return to Hong Kong from South Africa, but subsequently had a positive test on November 13 while in quarantine.
Dr Tom Peacock, a virologist at Imperial College London, said the variant could be ‘of real concern’.
Writing on Twitter, he said the strain ‘very, very much should be monitored due to that horrific spike profile’.
He added: ‘Export to Asia implies this might be more widespread than sequences alone would imply.
‘Also the extremely long branch length and incredibly high amount of spike mutations suggest this could be of real concern (predicted escape from most known monoclonal antibodies).
There were previously no countries on England’s red list.
What had been the final seven countries – Colombia, Peru, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Venezuela and Ecuador – were removed on November 1.
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