A GROWING list of European Union nations barred travel from the U.K. on Sunday and others were considering similar action, in a bid to block a new strain of coronavirus sweeping across southern England from spreading to the continent.

France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Ireland and Bulgaria all announced restrictions on U.K. travel, hours after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that Christmas shopping and gatherings in southern England must be canceled because of rapidly spreading infections blamed on the new coronavirus variant.

Johnson immediately placed those regions under a strict new Tier 4 restriction level, upending Christmas plans for millions.

Under the rules, no mixing of households will be allowed in Tier 4 except under very limited conditions outside in public places. Travel in and out of Tier 4 areas won’t be allowed unless essential. In the rest of England, people will be allowed to meet in Christmas bubbles for just one day instead of five, as the government originally planned.

The changes upend the plans of millions of people who were looking forward to gathering with family and friends this week and force scores to revise their travel plans at the last minute. Before Saturday, government officials maintained they would allow small, private gatherings to go ahead.

After he spoke, videos emerged online showing crowds of people at London’s train stations, apparently making a dash for places in the U.K. with less stringent coronavirus restrictions. Health Secretary Matt Hancock called those scenes “totally irresponsible.”

Travelers reportedly were told that social distancing “will not be possible” due to the volume of people on board, and those that felt “uncomfortable” should not stay on the train.

A woman, who did not wish to be named, said she and her partner had made the “split decision” to take their young son to her parents’ home on the coast. “We just made the decision to leave based on the fact that my parents said come, and we couldn’t bear the thought of no fresh air and a toddler going rogue round a small flat for the foreseeable,” she told the PA new agency.

While restaurants, pubs, bars and theaters in much of England are already closed and prepared for a bleak Christmas, all shops in Tier 4 areas that don’t sell food or medicine received only hours’ notice that they must shutter after Saturday until officials review the situation Dec. 30.

The British Retail Consortium said it was “hugely regrettable news,” especially coming just two weeks after a monthlong lockdown in England ended and at the height of the year’s peak retail period.

“Retailers have invested hundreds of millions of pounds making stores COVID-secure for customers and staff,” said Helen Dickinson, the trade body’s chief executive. “For businesses, the government’s stop-start approach is deeply unhelpful.”

While Hancock insisted officials had acted “very quickly and decisively,” critics said Britain’s Conservative government should have moved against rising infections much earlier.

“The alarms bells have been ringing for weeks, but the prime minister chose to ignore them,” said Keir Starmer, leader of the opposition Labour Party. “It is an act of gross negligence by a prime minister who, once again, has been caught behind the curve.”

France banned all travel from the U.K. for 48 hours from midnight Sunday, including trucks carrying freight through the tunnel under the English Channel or from the port of Dover on England’s south coast. French officials said the pause would buy time to find a “common doctrine” on how to deal with the threat, but it threw the busy cross-channel route used by thousands of trucks a day into chaos.

The Port of Dover tweeted Sunday night that its ferry terminal was “closed to all accompanied traffic leaving the U.K. until further notice due to border restrictions in France.”

Eurostar passenger trains from London to Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam were also halted.

Germany said all flights coming from Britain, except cargo flights, were no longer allowed to land starting midnight Sunday. It didn’t immediately say how long the flight ban would last. Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said he was issuing a flight ban for 24 hours starting at midnight “out of precaution.” “There are a great many questions about this new mutation,” he said, adding he hoped to have more clarity by today.

The British Government said Johnson presided at a meeting of the government’s crisis committee, COBRA, yesterday in the wake of the other nations’ measures. They come at a time of huge economic uncertainty for the U.K., less than two weeks before it leaves the EU’s economic structures Dec. 31, and with talks on a new post-Brexit trade relationship still deadlocked.

Johnson said Saturday that a fast-moving new variant of the virus that is 70 percent more transmissible than existing strains appeared to be driving the rapid spread of new infections in London and southern England in recent weeks. But he stressed “there’s no evidence to suggest it is more lethal or causes more severe illness,” or that vaccines will be less effective against it.

On Sunday, British Health Secretary Matt Hancock added to the alarm when he said “the new variant is out of control.” The U.K. recorded 35,928 further confirmed cases, around double the number from a week ago.

Germany, which holds the rotating EU presidency, called a special crisis meeting last week to coordinate the response to the virus news among the bloc’s 27 member states.

The Netherlands banned flights from the U.K. for at least the rest of the year. Ireland issued a 48-hour flight ban. Italy said it would block flights from the U.K. until Jan. 6, and an order signed Sunday prohibits entry into Italy by anyone who has been in the U.K. in the last 14 days.

The Czech Republic imposed stricter quarantine measures from people arriving from Britain.

Beyond Europe, Israel also said it was banning flights from Britain, Denmark and South Africa because those were the countries where the mutation is found.

Canada announced its own ban Sunday night. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in a statement that for 72 hours starting at midnight Sunday, “all flights from the U.K. will be prohibited from entering Canada.” He added that travelers who arrived Sunday would be subject to secondary screening and other health measures.

The World Health Organization tweeted late Saturday that it was “in close contact with U.K. officials on the new #COVID19 virus variant” and promised to update governments and the public as more is learned.

The new strain was identified in southeastern England in September and has been spreading in the area ever since, a WHO official told the BBC on Sunday.

“What we understand is that it does have increased transmissibility, in terms of its ability to spread,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead on COVID-19.

Studies are under way to better understand how fast it spreads and whether “it’s related to the variant itself, or a combination of factors with behavior,” she added.

Viruses mutate regularly, and scientists have found thousands of different mutations among samples of the virus causing COVID-19. Many of these changes have no effect on how easily the virus spreads or how severe symptoms are.

Europe has been walloped this fall by soaring new infections and deaths due to a resurgence of the virus, and many nations have reimposed a series of restrictions to reign in their outbreaks.

Britain has seen over 67,000 deaths in the pandemic, the second-highest confirmed toll in Europe after Italy. Europe as a whole has recorded nearly 499,000 virus deaths, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University that experts believe is an undercount, due to limited testing and missed cases.

The European Medicines Agency, meanwhile, met yesterday to approve the first COVID-19 vaccine for the European Union’s 27 nations, bringing vaccinations closer for millions of EU citizens. The vaccine made by German pharmaceutical company BioNTech and American drugmaker Pfizer is already in use in the United States, Britain, Canada and other countries.

(SD-Agencies)