Omicron has landed in Europe; travel from Southern Africa has been banned

The EU is scrambling to curb the spread of the new, heavily mutated variant of the coronavirus, known as the “Omicron” variant. Travel from South Africa and countries bordering it has been completely halted in most of the EU, in hopes that the new virus isn’t going to reach its shores. However, these measures have been implemented a little too late, as it has already been detected in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and France.

iStockphoto.com/RomanDrits

It is still unknown if this variant of COVID is of concern, as we don’t know how contagious it is, and if the mortality and hospitalization hates are different from the currently prevalent strains, as well as we don’t know how effective the vaccines are going to be against it.

It seems like a full lockdown in many countries is imminent. The EU is very likely to completely shut down its external borders, and limit internal travel even more. Hopefully, concerns are going to be eased soon enough, when we have access to more information about the unknown variables.