The government is alert and there is no need to panic, Union health minister Harsh Vardhan said on Monday after a new strain of coronavirus was detected in the United Kingdom. He said the government had done everything that was important to handle the Covid-19 situation in the last one year. Responding to a question on the panic over the new strain and a demand to ban flights from the UK, Vardhan told reporters, “I would say this to all that all these imaginary situations, imaginary talks, imaginary panic… don’t involve yourself in this.”
“The government is fully conscious about everything. If you ask me, there is no reason to panic the way we are seeing in this press conference,” the minister added.
Earlier in the day, chief minister Arvind Kejriwal urged the central government to ban flights from the United Kingdom.
“New mutation of corona virus has emerged in UK, which is a super-spreader. I urge central govt to ban all flights from UK immediately,” tweeted Kejriwal.
The United Kingdom announced a surprise lockdown on Saturday in London and parts of the country amid a surge in the cases of the coronavirus disease after the discovery of a new strain of the Sars-CoV-2 virus, which causes Covid-19. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that Christmas shopping and gatherings in southern England must be canceled. According to experts, the new strain could be up to 70% more infectious, prompting its European neighbours and several other countries to ban travellers from the country.
Several European Union nations and Canada have barred travel from the UK and others were considering similar action, in order to block the new strain of coronavirus which has been sweeping across southern England from spreading to the continent.
France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Ireland and Bulgaria all announced restrictions on UK travel.