Dozens of European Union (E.U.) nations today began banning flights from the United Kingdom (U.K.) in an effort to keep a new, fast-spreading strain of COVID-19 from reaching the continent.
Similarly, New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo is calling for U.S. federal officials to act quickly to prevent the mutant virus from entering the United States by halting or limiting transatlantic flights into New York and New Jersey. According to Syracuse.com, his pleas have so far gone unanswered, and the U.S. federal government has yet to react to this new development.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said yesterday that the new variant of the virus is 70-percent more transmissible than existing strains, and scientists say it’s responsible for the wave of new cases now sweeping southern England.
In an urgent address to his nation, Johnson instituted stricter lockdown measures, ordering the closure of non-essential businesses across affected areas of southern England, including London. He also banned all non-essential travel in the region and told Britons they’d need to remake their holiday plans, with no mixing of households indoors allowed.
During a conference call with reporters this afternoon, Cuomo emphasized the urgency of containing the new, more-infectious strain. “Today, that variant is getting on a plane and landing at JFK,” he said. “Doing nothing is negligent. It’s grossly negligent.”
Cuomo explained that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airports on the states’ borders, doesn’t hold the authority to cancel flights because of health concerns. Neither does the Port Authority have the ability to require to demand that inbound passengers meet certain health requirements. Those policies can only be enacted, Cuomo said, at the federal level.
New York Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker stated that, thus far, the virus’ new variant has not been detected by health officials in New York state. But, it could happen quickly.
“That is what kept me up last night,” the governor said. “This is the mistake we made” in early 2020, when COVID-19 first entered the U.S. by way of flights from Europe. “Where is HHS? Where is CDC? Where is the NIH?” Cuomo said.
The World Health Organization has determined that this COVID-19 variant spreads more aggressively than previous strains, but, “there’s no evidence to suggest it is more lethal or causes more severe illness,” as the British Prime Minister emphasized in yesterday’s address.
President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee for U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’, “We do not have evidence yet that this is a more deadly virus to an individual who acquires it,” according to AP News. He added, “There’s no reason to believe that the vaccines that have been developed will not be effective against this virus, as well.”