#15,661
On Friday the Japan MOH Reported 5 Cases Of UK Variant COVID, and less than 24 hours later decided to Ban Entry To All Foreign Nationals - starting today (Dec 28th), and lasting until the end of January - in hopes of preventing further introductions of this new perceived threat.
While there is still considerable debate over how much of an impact the UK (and the more recently announced South African) variant might have on the pandemic, we've seen dozens of countries ban travel to and from the UK over the past week.
The number of countries reporting imported cases continues to rise with both Finland and South Korea reporting the UK variant in the past 24 hours, and Indonesia joined Japan and Saudi Arabia in declaring a temporary ban on the entry of foreign nationals.
It appears, however, that the UK - and possibly the South African - variant have already made significant inroads around the globe, and therefore border closings and travel bans may already be too little, too late.
Today Japan announced 7 more detections, 6 involving the UK variant (B.1.1.7) and 1 the South African (501Y.V2) variant, both of which are feared to be more transmissible than the current dominant COVID virus (see PrePrint: Estimated Transmissibility & Severity Of UK SARS-CoV-2 Variant - CMMID).
This (translated) report today from Japan's MOH.
About the outbreak of patients with new coronavirus infection (mutant strain)
Passengers arriving at the airport from overseas were examined by the National Institute of Infectious Diseases for patients with the new coronavirus confirmed by quarantine, and the mutated new coronavirus infection reported in the United Kingdom today (12/28). Six cases of disease (mutant strain) and one case of mutated new coronavirus infection (mutant strain) reported in South Africa were detected.
The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare will continue to cooperate with the governments of each country, WHO, experts, etc., and strive to take flexible measures to prevent the spread of infection while paying close attention to the infection situation in other countries.
In addition, please be careful about the protection of personal information so that the person or family member is not identified by the media.
Reference 1 Information on new mutant strains in the
United Kingdom by WHO SARS-CoV-2 Variant? United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandReference 2 SARS-CoV-2 novel mutant strains that may increase infectivity (2nd report)
