Canada suspends flights from U.K. in response to new coronavirus strain

The federal government is restricting travel from the U.K. for 72 hours in an effort to keep a contagious new strain of the virus that causes COVID-19 out of Canada.

The travel ban comes into effect first thing Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Twitter after an hours-long meeting with members of the Incident Response Group

“We focused on the new variant of COVID-19 identified in the U.K., and we have decided to implement new border restrictions in order to keep you — and people right across the country — safe,” he wrote on Sunday evening.

He added that passengers who arrived in Canada from the U.K. on Sunday will be subject to secondary screening and “enhanced measures.”

Those measures include increased scrutiny of quarantine plans, Health Canada said in a statement.

“The Government of Canada is closely monitoring the genetic variant of the virus that causes COVID-19 identified in the United Kingdom and is working with international partners, including the World Health Organization, to better understand this variant and its impacts,” the agency said.

While the early science suggests the new variant is more transmissible than other strains, Health Canada said there’s nothing at this point suggesting that the mutations have any effect on symptom severity, antibody response or vaccine efficacy.

It added that there have been no recorded cases of the new strain in Canada.

The travel ban doesn’t apply to cargo flights or stops where passengers do not disembark, according to a Notice to Airmen issued Sunday evening.

Several European countries announced earlier that they would close their borders to the U.K. as British officials struggle to contain the new strain of the novel coronavirus, which has been blamed on a genetic mutation.