over the weekend, including France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Ireland, Belgium and Canada - although experts said the strain may already be circulating in countries with less advanced detection methods than the United Kingdom.
"My chances of going home for Christmas are going down. It's stupid and I am nervous and unhappy about that," said Stanislaw Olbrich, a 55-year-old Polish trucker 40km north of Dover.The discovery of the new strain, just months before vaccines are expected to be widely available, sowed new panic in a pandemic that has killed about 1.7 million people worldwide and more than 67,000 in Britain.
British Airways agreed to allow only passengers who test negative for the coronavirus to fly to New York's John F Kennedy International Airport, he said.US Assistant Health Secretary Brett Giroir said nothing had yet been decided on any travel ban.within a week after its medicines regulator approved the use of a shot from Pfizer and BioNTech on Monday.but they were working around the clock to determine whether the mutations would affect how well the shots guarded against infection.
"And I think it's likely therefore that measures need to need to be increased in some places in due course, not reduced."As well as the traffic jams around British ports, trucks were also backed up in Calais and other French ports. Although they are allowed to cross from France to Britain, the logistics chain that keeps the goods moving has been thrown out of kilter.
European shares slumped, with travel and leisure stocks bearing the brunt. British Airways-owner IAG and easyJet dropped about 7 per cent, while Air France KLM lost around 3 per cent. Talks on a Brexit trade deal continued on Monday but Johnson said there were still problems and the position was unchanged.