Belgium, Netherlands Ban Flights And Trains From UK
Netherlands and Belgium have suspended flights while Belgium has also banned trains from the United Kingdom where cases of a more infectious variant of the coronavirus are rising fast.
This comes when a number of European countries are also considering banning travel from the UK to prevent the spread of a more infectious variant of coronavirus.
Germany and France are reported to be among the countries considering banning travel from the UK.
Planned relaxation of Christmas rules have been scrapped for London and large parts of south-east England which have experienced a rapid rise of the new variant cases.
Announcing new restrictions on Saturday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his top health officials said that there was no evidence the new variant was more deadly or would react differently to vaccines, but it was proving to be up to 70% more transmissible.
Following the UK announcement, the Netherlands banned flights from the UK from 06:00 (05:00 GMT) on Sunday until 1 January.
Meanwhile, Belgium is suspending flights and train arrivals from the UK from midnight (23:00 GMT) Sunday as a “precautionary measure”, and if need be, there will be “additional measures”.
The German government said it was monitoring developments in the UK and working at “high pressure” to evaluate the new information and data regarding the new variant while France too was “seriously” considering suspending flights and trains from the UK.
More: BBC News
