Cancun, Q.R. — Despite other countries banning UK flights due to the new strain of virus, Mexico says it “will not do the same”. In a public address Monday, Mexico’s president says that for the time being, the country will not suspend UK flights.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said on Monday that in Mexico, for the moment, there is no decision to ban flights from the United Kingdom after the discovery of the new strain of coronavirus.
“This issue in the UK came from a new strain. Doctors say that it is not exactly that, but a new variant and measures began to be taken in some countries. Our specialists say that we have to wait, not act politically without having technical elements,” he said during his public conference.
On Sunday, the Ministry of Health reported that to date, there was no confirmed information that the new strain was more deadly. However, the Director General of Epidemiology, José Luis Alomía Zegarra said that epidemiological surveillance will be maintained.
“We are going to be very attentive to the positions issued by the WHO, to the data issued by the European Union in the following days,” he said.
The official recalled that other variants of SARS-CoV-2 have been detected in the past and that these have not made a difference in fighting the epidemic.
“This variant has not been found to cause more serious disease let alone be more lethal compared to other variants,” he added.
Alomía Zegarra said that the UK variant has already been detected in the United States and Brazil with US and European experts saying that the strain does not influence the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.
Since the news was released Saturday, more than a dozen countries have either banned or temporarily suspended accepting air and land travel from the UK.
