By RAF CASERT, As­so­ci­at­ed Press

BRUS­SELS (AP) — A slew of na­tions moved to stop air trav­el from south­ern Africa on Fri­day, and stocks plunged in Asia and Eu­rope in re­ac­tion to news of a new, po­ten­tial­ly more trans­mis­si­ble COVID-19 vari­ant.

“The last thing we need is to bring in a new vari­ant that will cause even more prob­lems,” said Ger­man Health Min­is­ter Jens Spahn, amid a mas­sive spike in cas­es in the 27-na­tion Eu­ro­pean Union, which is rec­om­mend­ing a ban on flights from south­ern African na­tions.

With­in a few days of the dis­cov­ery of the new vari­ant, it has al­ready im­pact­ed on a jit­tery world that is sen­si­tive to bad COVID-19 news, with deaths around the globe stand­ing at well over 5 mil­lion.

Med­ical ex­perts, in­clud­ing the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion, warned against any over­re­ac­tion be­fore all el­e­ments were clear but na­tions who act­ed said their con­cerns were jus­ti­fied.

“Ear­ly in­di­ca­tions show this vari­ant may be more trans­mis­si­ble than the delta vari­ant and cur­rent vac­cines may be less ef­fec­tive against it,” British Health Sec­re­tary Sajid Javid told law­mak­ers. “We must move quick­ly and at the ear­li­est pos­si­ble mo­ment,” he said.

Bel­gium be­came the first Eu­ro­pean Union coun­try to an­nounce a case of the vari­ant.

“We have one case of this vari­ant that is con­firmed. It’s some­one who came from abroad,” said Health Min­is­ter Frank Van­den­broucke. “It’s a sus­pi­cious vari­ant. We don’t know if it’s a very dan­ger­ous vari­ant.”

Is­rael, one of the world’s most vac­ci­nat­ed coun­tries, an­nounced Fri­day that it has al­so de­tect­ed the coun­try’s first case of the new vari­ant, in a trav­el­er who re­turned from Malawi. The trav­el­er and two oth­er sus­pect­ed cas­es have been placed in iso­la­tion. It said all three are vac­ci­nat­ed but that it is cur­rent­ly look­ing in­to their ex­act vac­ci­na­tion sta­tus.

People queue to get vaccinated at a shopping mall, in Johannesburg, South Africa, Friday Nov. 26, 2021. Advisers to the World Health Organization are holding a special session Friday to flesh out information about a worrying new variant of the coronavirus that has emerged in South Africa, though its impact on COVID-19 vaccines may not be known for weeks. (AP Photo/Denis Farrell)

The new vari­ant im­me­di­ate­ly in­fect­ed stock mar­kets around the world. Ma­jor in­dex­es fell in Eu­rope and Asia and Dow Jones fu­tures dipped 800 points ahead of the mar­ket open­ing in the U.S.

“In­vestors are like­ly to shoot first and ask ques­tions lat­er un­til more is known,” said Jef­frey Hal­ley of for­eign ex­change bro­ker Oan­da.

Oil prices plunged, with US. crude off 6.7% at $73.22 per bar­rel and the in­ter­na­tion­al Brent bench­mark off 5.6% at $77.64, both un­usu­al­ly large moves for a sin­gle day. The pan­dem­ic caused oil prices to plunge dur­ing the ini­tial out­break of the pan­dem­ic in 2020 be­cause trav­el re­stric­tions re­duced de­mand for fu­el.

Air­lines shares were ham­mered, with Lufthansa off 12.4%, IAG, par­ent of British Air­ways and Iberia, off 14.4%, Air France-KLM down 8.9% and easy­Jet falling 10.9%

The WHO cau­tioned not to jump to con­clu­sions too fast.

Speak­ing be­fore the EU an­nounce­ment, Dr. Michael Ryan, the head of emer­gen­cies at the WHO said that “it’s re­al­ly im­por­tant that there are no knee-jerk re­spons­es.”

“We’ve seen in the past, the minute there’s any kind of men­tion of any kind of vari­a­tion and every­one is clos­ing bor­ders and re­strict­ing trav­el. It’s re­al­ly im­por­tant that we re­main open, and stay fo­cused,” Ryan said.

The Africa Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion agreed and it “strong­ly dis­cour­ages the im­po­si­tion of trav­el ban for peo­ple orig­i­nat­ing from coun­tries that have re­port­ed this vari­ant,” it said in a state­ment. It added that “over the du­ra­tion of this pan­dem­ic, we have ob­served that im­pos­ing bans on trav­ellers from coun­tries where a new vari­ant is re­port­ed has not yield­ed a mean­ing­ful out­come.”

Those urg­ings quick­ly fell on deaf ears.

A departures screen displays a cancelled flight to Johannesburg and a message to contact the airline for a scheduled flight to Capetown, at London's Heathrow Airport, Friday, Nov. 26, 2021. The U.K. announced that it was banning flights from South Africa and five other southern African countries effective at noon on Friday, and that anyone who had recently arrived from those countries would be asked to take a coronavirus test. (AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali)

The U.K. an­nounced that it was ban­ning flights from South Africa and five oth­er south­ern African coun­tries ef­fec­tive at noon on Fri­day, and that any­one who had re­cent­ly ar­rived from those coun­tries would be asked to take a coro­n­avirus test.

Ger­many said its flight ban could be en­act­ed as soon as Fri­day night. Spahn said air­lines com­ing back from South Africa will on­ly be able to trans­port Ger­man cit­i­zens home, and trav­ellers will need to go in­to quar­an­tine for 14 days whether they are vac­ci­nat­ed or not.

Ger­many has seen new record dai­ly case num­bers in re­cent days and passed the mark of 100,000 deaths from COVID-19 on Thurs­day.

Italy’s health min­istry al­so an­nounced mea­sures to ban en­try in­to Italy of any­one who has been in sev­en south­ern African na­tions — South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana, Zim­bab­we, Mozam­bique, Namib­ia and Eswa­ti­ni — in the past 14 days due to the new vari­ant. The Nether­lands and the Czech Re­pub­lic are plan­ning sim­i­lar mea­sures.

The Japan­ese gov­ern­ment an­nounced that from Fri­day, Japan­ese na­tion­als trav­el­ing from Eswa­ti­ni, Zim­bab­we, Namib­ia, Botswana, South Africa and Lesotho will have to quar­an­tine at gov­ern­ment-ded­i­cat­ed ac­com­mo­da­tion for 10 days and do a COVID test on Day 3, Day 6 and Day 10. Japan has not yet opened up to for­eign na­tion­als.

The ac­tions had a quick ef­fect in the world of sports. A batch of British and Irish golfers with­drew from the Joburg Open be­fore Fri­day’s sec­ond round af­ter the U.K. gov­ern­ment an­nounced it was ban­ning flights from South Africa.

The South African gov­ern­ment said in a state­ment that the “U.K.’s de­ci­sion to tem­porar­i­ly ban South Africans from en­ter­ing the U.K. seems to have been rushed as even the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion is yet to ad­vise on the next steps.”

The coro­n­avirus evolves as it spreads and many new vari­ants, in­clud­ing those with wor­ry­ing mu­ta­tions, of­ten just die out. Sci­en­tists mon­i­tor for pos­si­ble changes that could be more trans­mis­si­ble or dead­ly but sort­ing out whether new vari­ants will have a pub­lic health im­pact can take time.

Cur­rent­ly iden­ti­fied as B.1.1.529, the new vari­ant has al­so been found in Botswana and Hong Kong in trav­el­ers from South Africa, he said.

The WHO’s tech­ni­cal work­ing group is to meet Fri­day to as­sess the new vari­ant and may de­cide whether to give it a name from the Greek al­pha­bet. It says coro­n­avirus in­fec­tions jumped 11% in Eu­rope in the past week, the on­ly re­gion in the world where COVID-19 con­tin­ues to rise. The WHO’s Eu­rope di­rec­tor, Dr. Hans Kluge, warned that with­out ur­gent mea­sures, the con­ti­nent could see an­oth­er 700,000 deaths by the spring.

____

Lorne Cook in Brus­sels, Colleen Bar­ry in Mi­lan, Pan Py­las in Lon­don, Jamey Keat­en in Gene­va, Mike Corder in The Hague, Dave McHugh in Frank­furt, Car­ley Pe­tesch in Dakar, An­drew Mel­drum in Jo­han­nes­burg and Frank Jor­dans in Berlin con­tributed