Tourists worried After Flights Bans Over New Covid Strain

Banned flights from South Africa and its neighbouring countries

Johannesburg: On Friday, travellers anxiously waited in long queues at Johannesburg's international airport, desperate to get onto the last flights to countries that had recently shut their doors to South Africa.

Many cancelled their holidays, rushing back from safaris and vineyards when suddenly Britain announced on late Thursday night that all flights from South Africa and its neighbours would be banned for the following days.

The concern has increased about the discovery of a new coronavirus variant with a large number of mutations fuelling an infection resurgence in South Africa.

UK native Toby Reid, a 24-year-old trader in London, was in Cape Town's Table Mountain for holidays with his girlfriend when the ban was announced.

He told AFP, "At about 5:30 am we got up to see if we could catch the sunrise, and at six in the morning we found out that there was still a possibility to get back." He was standing in line for check-in at the Johannesburg airport just hours later.

The couple managed to grab the two last seats on an evening flight to Frankfurt.

"South Africa found it but it's probably all over the world already," citizens told news agency AFP.

The variant has so far been detected in Belgium, Botswana, Israel and Hong Kong.

At the airport, red "cancelled" signs flashed next to London-bound flights listed on the departures board.

Just a few hours after France announced the ban, Travellers milled around a closed Air France check-in desk, waiting to find out whether an evening flight to Paris would take-off as scheduled.

Among them were UK citizen Ruth Brown, 25, who lives in South Africa and had planned to return home for the time from 2019 next week.

Britain kept South Africa on its red list until October, meaning many of its citizens have been unable to travel back since the pandemic started -- unable to afford the costly hotel quarantine as well.