Kuwait is banning flights arriving from the UK over reports that a new virus strain was found in Britain. In fact, Kuwait’s civil aviation authority has added the UK to its high-risk list of countries. With that, it has banned all flights from there.
The move was following several countries’ efforts to ban flights from the UK due to the same reason. The coronavirus pandemic has been impacting economies and sectors around the world.
The World Health Organisation has asked European countries to redouble their health measures on the back of the rapidly spreading virus strain. In August, Kuwait had banned commercial flights to 31 countries which it had considered being high-risk due to infection spread.
Now the UK has said that a new strain of the virus is highly infectious up to 70 percent more likely than the previous one. However, it is not considered to be more deadly and vaccines should be effective, media reports said.
Johnson and England’s Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty told the media “There’s no evidence that it causes more severe illness or higher mortality, but it does appear to be passed on significantly more easily. Although there’s considerable uncertainty, it may be up to 70 percent more transmissible than the old variant, the original version of the disease. This is early data and it’s subject to review. But it’s the best that we have at the moment and we have to act on information as we have it, because this is now spreading very fast.”