Govt monitoring new COVID-19 strain found in Britain

The Ministry of Health on Tuesday announced it was closely following the global trends of a new variant strain (501. V2) of SARS CoV-2 that has been reported in the UK, other parts of Europe, and now South Africa and Nigeria.

Addressing the media at the Uganda Media Center on the COVID-19 situation, Dr Joyce Moriku Kaducu the State Minister for Primary Health Care said "We are closely following the global trends. The increasing number of patients presenting with the severe and critical disease across the country has raised new challenges and a strain on the health system."

The Minister also noted that the government continues to expand intensive care units and high dependency unit bed capacity as part of its surge plan to meet the increasing demand following the spike in the number of COVID-19 patients.

On Sunday, several European countries announced they banned flights from the UK and the World Health Organisation (WHO) called for stronger containment measures as the British government warned that a potent new strain of the virus was "out of control".

The Netherlands imposed a ban on UK flights on Sunday and Belgium said it would follow suit from midnight with a ban on planes and trains from the UK.

Alarm bells were ringing across Europe -- which last week became the first region in the world to pass 500,000 deaths from Covid-19 since the pandemic broke out a year ago -- after it appeared that a new, even more, infectious strain of the virus was raging in parts of Britain.

Germany, too, was considering a similar move as "a serious option" for flights from both Britain and South Africa, where another variant was discovered, according to a government source.

Italy will join the ban in order to protect its citizens, Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio wrote on Facebook, without specifying when the measures would come into force.

Austria's health ministry told the APA news agency that it would also impose a flight ban, the details of which were still being worked out.

A spokeswoman for WHO Europe told AFP that "across Europe, where transmission is intense and widespread, countries need to redouble their control and prevention approaches."

French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and EU chiefs Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel held a conference call on Sunday about the matter, according to the Elysee palace in Paris.