The Diplomat
The Council of Ministers will approve next Tuesday the suspension of air connections with South Africa and Botswana because of the new variant of the coronavirus.
“We will take to the next Council of Ministers an agreement to restrict flights from South Africa and Botswana, and also from other countries, but in principle these two,” said yesterday the Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, on TVE. “We are also going to adopt the decision to demand from high-risk countries not only the vaccination, but also an antigen and PCR test”, she added. The Ministry of Health assured yesterday that, for the moment, the National Epidemiological Surveillance Network has not sequenced any case of the B.1.1.529 variant in Spain. Therefore, it has asked for “tranquility” and has reminded that “there is no intense passenger traffic” between these two countries and Spain.
In any case, and pending the Council of Ministers on Tuesday, the 27 countries of the European Union already reached an agreement yesterday to suspend travel from southern Africa for fear of the spread and possible severity of the new variant of the coronavirus and to require Europeans coming from the region to undergo a test and pass a period of quarantine, as reported by the Slovenian Presidency of the Council of the European Union.
The United Kingdom, which does have close trade links with South Africa, has also suspended flights to the country. South Africa’s Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Lindiwe Susulu, said in a statement yesterday that the UK’s border closure is “a hasty decision” that could cause “damage to the tourism industry and businesses of both countries”.
