Ireland extends travel ban for UK and South Africa

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On Dec. 21, Ireland enacted a travel ban on air and ferry travel originating from the United Kingdom.

This was done in response to a more contagious strain of COVID-19 that was discovered there earlier that month and is believed to have first appeared there in September.

That ban has been extended to Jan. 6, and one for South Africa has been added to it; a different strain has been found there.

More than 70 other countries have also restricted arrivals from the U.K. Some have set blanket bans while others are allowing visitors from there if they can show evidence of a negative PCR test.

Meanwhile, South Africa is struggling with the virus as well, reporting on Dec. 31 that a record 18,000 new cases were diagnosed over the previous 24 hours.

Irish officials are already concerned about their own infection rates and want to ensure that those do not increase more than is necessary in the near future.

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However, the U.K.-originating strain has already arrived there, being first identified in Ireland on Dec. 24.

Further restrictions have also been imposed within Ireland, including people not being allowed to travel more than 5 kilometers from their homes and being urged to remain there whenever possible.

Paul Reid, the Health Service Executive’s director-general, said on RTE’s Morning Ireland that a “worst-case scenario” is coming together and that the impact is expected to be “explosive.”

The situation in the U.K. has been dire lately as COVID-19 cases there increased at an exponential rate in December.

On the final day of that month, it reported a record 55,892 new infections and 964 deaths related to the virus.

As a result of these growing figures, field hospitals that had been constructed in the spring but stopped being used are being revitalized.

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