The red list is back, with flights from six African countries banned:

http://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-n...perts-12478737

The UK government is moving quickly. One can only hope the rest of the world quickly follows suit.

If it's true that this variant is even more transmissible than Delta and so on... it's already too late I fear. Meanwhile it generates even more disruption, lack of confidence and adds to the overall Covid fatigue.

And... it begs the question of how this is going to end. It's almost 2 years since the first unlucky sod had a cough and a fever in Wuhan.

It appears that Germany is quickly following suit.

From the Guardian:

Phew. I was worried there was not enough for the doom and gloom brigade so here we go again.

Having had my booster in September, and a second one in October, I have today received an email from the NHS sayingMy third and fourth doses are appearing in the medicines section of the NHS app and also in my covid pass. How can their records not show that? Just how incompetent can they be?

Does anyone know the likely efficacy of a fifth jab? :D

This is the UK, you should know the answer to that. Seriously though, I was getting bombarded with SMS and emails from my local GP practice after my booster. There is a link in there that you can use to tell them to go away.

Unfortunately, there isn't. After my first booster I spent three weeks trying to "tell them to go away" and thought that getting the second booster had done the trick. It did, at least, keep them at bay for six weeks. :)

Aren’t we doing the usual mistake by not closing to South Africa straight away? Instead a bunch of full flights will rock up to the U.K. today, from which I assume no pre departure test is required? Question not a statement

I don't think there's a great deal they can do about flights that are in the air already. Fortunately, there shouldn't be too many of them. The ban was announced hours in advance of most direct flights departing to the UK. The real problem is going to be connections. So, flights to Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and then connections to every major (and some not so major) airport in the UK. In simple terms, if the strain turns out to be anything like as bad as first feared, it could conceivably hit virtually every major UK population centre at the same time. Without a very high level of international cooperation, our own measures may end up being pretty useless.

Just seen the ban is midday today, so fair enough! Even Labour seem to have given them
credit.

Even with all of the countries working together, these things can never realistically be kept out can they? An African scientist suggested it will already be in the U.K.

Is it still the case that we should expect future variants to be more transmissible and less deadly? If so, then hopefully whatever is coming from South Africa will be less problematic than previous variants?

I think this is where the experts play their "nobody knows" card. I'm not suggesting I'm in any way paranoid but I do pay a great deal of attention to what is being said in this sort of situation. Specifically, absolutly nothing is being said about symptoms/hospitalisations and deaths. That kind of thing always causes a few neurons to fire.

I am the first to call out general incompetence, especially when it comes to the NHS, but I do think this is a little unfair. In reality, the administration of the vaccine programme has been incredibly incompetent. With a population of 65 million, there have been remarkably few errors, and far fewer than anyone could reasonably expect from an emergency programme which was pulled together so quickly, and where the goalposts kept changing.

If we could have such accuracy from the day to day operations of the NHS, we'd be a healthier and richer country.

My comment was not intended as a criticism of the vaccine program which has by any reasonable measure been a success. However HMG's capability when it comes to managing any sort of data/database is rather less successful.

No, they can't but the aim is not to ensure that not a single case filters through. It is to delay the inevitable so as to give us some more time a) to study the characteristics of the variant and, if the threat turns out to be serious, b) develop strategies to cope with it and c) hopefully delay as much as possible the onset of the worst of the wave until after the Northern hemisphere winter season.