According to reports here today France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and Italy have all announced restrictions on UK travel. It is also reported that the Channel Tunnel has been closed or stopped.
This due to a new virulent strain of coronavirus which has arisen in the south of England.
Is this true?
Yes that is true Bruce, the new virulent strain of coronavirus is spreading fast.
Hi Bruce 
I suspect there is a lot more of the ānew variantā C19 in Europe than those cases that are being acknowledged , we have the advantage of Porton Down which is a world class facility some countries do not have .
I understand you already have cases in Australia.
Along with the UK, the same mutation of the Covid-19 virus has also been detected in the Netherlands, Denmark and Australia, the WHO told the BBC.
Hi
A reminder to those who wanted sanctions against China where the original virus mutated to infect humans.
Sanctions against the UK?
Given itās been around since September it wonāt be confined to the UKā¦
That could be true but it will only be in Hotel Quarantine and not in the community. The only community transmission at the moment is the northern beaches cluster in NSW (15 cases in the last 24 hours) and that is a strain from the USA from an air crew member who arrived on the 1st December. How it got from there to the northern beaches is a mystery at the moment
Currently there is no other community transmission in Australia. I am watching the NSW Premierās 11am press conference as I type so that is about as up to date as you can get.
The advantage of low case numbers is that every case can be genome sequenced and tracked.
Breaking News:
Funnily enough at this very moment the Chief Health Officer at the press conference was asked about the UK strain and she said there have been two cases in returning travellers of the British Coronavirus but none in the community. I presume that means the virus has been eliminated in Hotel Quarantine (so far).
There you go!
Hi
The UK is now isolated, no freight, no passenger transport to the EU.
You can bring goods in, but cannot drive back.
A fifth of our imports come across the Channel and it is shut.
The Container Ports are weeks behind.
Just in time deliveries are not arriving and companies are shutting down early.
Doesnāt the flu virus mutate every year? Hence the need for a modified flu jab every year.
Hi
Exactly right.
We will adapt and life will go on.
According to this evenings news this strain is no worse than the previous one as far as the illness goes but it is far more contagious. It is also thought that the existing emergency vaccines will protect against it.
Iām thinking the same too OGF ?
Donkeyman!
They keep saying Covid has a very slow mutation rate. Studies report half the mutation rate of seasonal flu. The lower the volume of transmission the less chance it has to mutate.
I donāt understand how it could be more transmissible. Has it gotten smaller or faster? Seems as though we are all panicking.
A bit insensitive considering that, for many, it wonāt!
It was reported as 70% for contagious - no idea where that figure came from
The scenes at the Dover docks look like Brexit came early?
Together with the annual flu jab, it looks like we will need vaccines every month just to surviveā¦
I agree Annie, itās not got superpowersā¦As I understand it, it has to find itās way up your nose, so you need to be in close proximity of someone who has the virus (and it only remains infectious for a short time) and it has to enter your respiratory system. Of the 65 million or so of the population, it has failed to do that. And of the two million that have been infected, lets not forget that this is a ārollingā total over ten or eleven months. So although the figures seem worrying, there are not 2 million people walking round today waiting to infect the unsuspecting non mask wearing individualā¦
Hi
We have beaten Smallpox, we will defeat this.
It just takes time.
A few years ago I would have been dead, medical science moves on.
Smallpox is not spread by airborne means Swim. Neither were most of the diseases that we were vaccinated against as children.
The ONS last estimated (18 December 2020) that there were 567,300 people within the community population in England with āliveā COVID-19, equating to around 1 in 95 people.
Of course, that number will currently be increasing exponentially ā¦ :shock: