Home for Christmas: U.K. locks down amid fears of more contagious new strain of COVID-19

News that COVID-19 has developed into an even more contagious, mutant strain has led the British government to introduce new laws to further restrict movement and person-to-person contact over the Christmas period.

The stricter measures came into force at midnight on Saturday in England. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have already instituted tougher controls: Wales is now in full lockdown, and Scotland and Northern Ireland will follow suit from Dec. 26.

The surprise move reversed government plans to relax restrictions on household gatherings over the Christmas period. Now, in London and much of the South East, families will have to stay in their own households on Christmas Day without visitors. Elsewhere up to three families will be able to meet, but only for that one day.

"It would be an enormous tragedy if we had a spike in deaths at the end of January/February because we took our foot off the pedal this close to having a vaccine," former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt told the BBC: 

News of the mutant strain caused panic across Europe. France announced on Sunday that it was suspending freight and passenger transport from the U.K. for 48 hours. However, transport minister Grant Shapps claims this would not affect "unaccompanied" freight arriving in containers, which accounts for roughly 80% of trade.

The French move forced Kent police to put "Operation Stack" into place. This emergency measure allows a part of the M20 highway to be used to line up trucks as they wait to cross the channel to France and avoids gridlock of other traffic using the road network.

Brexit architect Nigel Farage has accused the EU of using the latest COVID crisis to put pressure on Boris Johnson as talks on trade arrangements are still continuing for when the U.K. leaves the EU for good on Dec. 31. He described them on Twitter as "thugs and bullies who want to make us sign a bad deal." 

But on Monday French Transport Minister Jean-Baptiste Djebbari relented and announced new European-wide sanitary measures to allow traffic flows to resume. 

Following the British government's decision to inform the WHO of the new COVID variant VUI-202012/01, more than 40 countries have announced travel bans to the UK, including India, Canada and Switzerland, the BBC reports. The European Union member states are currently meeting in Brussels to discuss a coordinated response.

British Health Secretary Matt Hancock has defended the government's measures and warned that the new infectious and rapid-spreading strain "was out of control" and the government had to act "quickly and decisively."

This strain of the virus is thought not to be more life-threatening, but it is said to be 70% more transmissible, although some leading experts are challenging this. 

"The amount of evidence in the public domain is woefully inadequate to draw strong or firm opinions on whether the virus has truly increased transmission," Professor Jonathan Ball, a virologist at the University of Nottingham, told the BBC.