UK Closes World's Busiest Flight Routes To Curb Spread Of New COVID-19 Variant

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JAKARTA - Britain is closing direct passenger flights to and from the United Arab Emirates (UAE). That means the UK has closed the world's busiest international airline route, from Dubai to London.

Quoting Reuters, Friday January 29, 2021, the UK said it was adding the UAE, Burundi, and Rwanda to its travel ban list because of concerns over the spread of more contagious variants of COVID-19. The virus is potentially vaccine-resistant and was first identified in South Africa (South Africa).

"This means people who have entered or transited through these countries will be banned to enter the country, except for the UK, Irish and third country citizens with residency rights who will have to self-isolate for ten days at home", said the UK Transport Minister, Grant Shapps.

Emirates Airways said on their website that it would suspend all the UK passenger flights from Friday 29 January, when the ban comes into effect. Etihad Airways said they would only suspend flights to the UK, with flights from the UK remaining unaffected.

Dubai Airport, in a statement, advised the passengers who are already booked flights and will be arriving in the UK after the ban not to go to the airport and contact their airlines immediately.

The UK transport department advises the UK citizens who are currently in the UAE to use an indirect commercial airline route if they wish to return to the UK.

Dubai to London is the world's busiest international route. As of January 2021, there is a schedule with 190,365 seats, according to airline data provider OAG. Emirates and Etihad typically carry large numbers of passengers connecting from the UK to destinations such as Australia via their airport hubs, meaning the decision to cancel those flights will have far-reaching implications.

The Australian government said it would add more charter flights from the UK if needed as a result of the cancellation of Emirates and Etihad flights.

Previously, researchers in South Africa found that a new variant of the coronavirus, named 501Y.V2, is resistant to blood plasma therapy. In addition, this new variant could also reduce the effectiveness of the current vaccine range. The 501Y.V2 variant itself shows the results of identification by South African genomics experts at the end of 2020 in Nelson Mandela Bay.

"This lineage represents a total breakout of three therapeutically relevant classes of monoclonal antibodies", said a team of scientists from three South African universities working with the National Institute for Infectious Diseases (NICD) in a paper in the journal bioRxiv.

"Furthermore, 501Y.V2 represents a substantial or complete escape from neutralizing antibodies in the COVID-19 recovery plasma, the possibility of reinfection and signifies a reduced efficacy of the current vaccines", the paper added.

Researchers in South Africa call the 501Y.V2 variant a variant that is 50 percent more contagious than other variants. In addition, this variant is believed to have spread to more than 20 countries since it was first reported to WHO in December 2020.