India Added to ‘Red List’ of COVID Travel Due to New Variation Concerns | Political news

Travel from India to the UK is banned for non-UK and Irish citizens from 4 a.m. Friday after the country was added to the travel ‘red list’.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced that the “vital but difficult” decision has been made due to a new variant of COVID first identified in India.

According to figures from the COVID-19 Genomics UK Consortium (COG-UK), which tracks COVID variants, 182 cases of the Indian variant have so far been found in the UK.

Of these, 162 cases have been found in the past five weeks.

In a statement in the House of Commons on Monday, Mr Hancock told MPs: ‘We have analyzed samples of these cases to see if this variant exhibits any characteristics of concern – such as increased transmissibility or resistance to treatments and vaccines. – which means to be treated as a variant of concern.

“After reviewing the data and on a precautionary basis, we made the difficult but vital decision to add India to the Red List.”