Virus picking on people? Germany has banned British tourists but not German citizens from returning home

Germany has banned British tourists from entering the country, but has not restricted German citizens and their families from returning home, German media reported.

The new rules, which will ban airlines from carrying British passengers to Germany, came into effect at 11pm local time on December 19. The restrictions are likely to remain in place until at least January 3, 2022, according to the Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s public health agency. It is worth mentioning that the new rules will not affect German citizens, their families or transit passengers.

France, meanwhile, has imposed similar restrictions, which came into effect at 11pm local time on December 17. Freight traffic has been badly affected by the flood of passengers travelling to France to avoid a ban on British tourists. There were long queues of cars at the entrance to the Kent M20 motorway to Dover and the Channel Tunnel.

Germany’s new rules immediately triggered a storm of public opinion, and netizens could not help but link it to Japan’s previous epidemic prevention policy. Earlier, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced that the country was closed to foreigners. According to a Japanese government official, the Japanese government has decided to extend the entry ban on foreigners, and the timing of lifting the ban depends on the development of the omicron virus.

The outbreak in the UK has worsened since the discovery of a mutant strain of omicron. The number of confirmed cases of the omicron strain has reached a new high, but the number of new cases across the UK has dropped, the government said on Tuesday. On the same day, the government said more than 900,000 doses of the third dose of COVID-19 vaccine had been administered in the UK in a single day.

It was reported that the omicron mutant strain was first identified in South Africa on 9 November local time and was first reported to WHO on 24 November local time. Omicron is by far the most highly evolved variant, with 32 mutations, twice as many as Delta. Highly infectious and vaccine-resistant, its spike protein changes much more than other variants.

The World Health Organization has designated the omicron variant as “of concern.” Who said it was mobilizing researchers around the world to learn more about omicron’s impact on the COVID-19 outbreak, with results expected in the coming days or weeks.