Italy, Germany to ban entry from South Africa amid fears surrounding new COVID-19 variant

Fear continues to reverberate across the globe

Italy says that it will impose an entry ban on people who have visited a group of southern African states (namely South African, Lesotho, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Namibia and Eswatini) in the last 14 days due to the new COVID-19 variant.

Meanwhile, Germany has declared South Africa as "a country with a COVID-19 variant of concern" with the government saying that they will ban most travel from South Africa over the new COVID-19 variant.