BRITS have been held against their will at airports in Europe as the EU moves to ban all travel from the UK.
The move comes after a new mutant strain of Covid sparked the Tier 4 lockdown in London and the South East.
Countries including France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Austria, Denmark, Ireland, and Bulgaria announced restrictions on UK travel.
In Germany, officials at Hanover airport set up campbeds for 63 people who arrived from Britain.
One passenger Manuela Thomys said in a video “we are being held against our will” and “please don’t leave us” while others decided to turn back to the UK.
The video published by Bild also showed a nine-month-old baby among the stranded passengers who included British and German nationals.
Passengers arriving in Stuttgart Airport, were also told by the pilot of their Eurowings flight from the UK they would have to sleep on camp beds on arrival.
There were similar scenes at in Berlin where 77 passengers were awaiting test results this morning after arriving from Britain last night.
Bild is also reported the EU is planning to block all passenger transport to and from the UK.
Ireland has also stopped flights, causing chaos at Heathrow as hundreds of passengers scrambled onto the last flight to Dublin moments before the travel ban took effect.
Meanwhile the Italian authorities also announced the mutant strain had been detected in a traveller who recently returned to the country from the UK.
With France suspending all traffic from the UK for 48 hours, fears have been raised trade could be severely disrupted.
Supermarkets face major shortages of food and Christmas goods after France closed its UK border.
But supplies of the Covid vaccine will not be affected, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said on Monday morning.
Outside Europe, Canada, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Kuwait, El Salvador, Argentina, Chile and Morocco have all imposed their own travel bans.
But US officials have said they won’t ground UK flights despite the spread of the Covid mutant strain, as Europe shuts its doors to Brits.
Moncef Slaoui, chief advisor to the government’s Operation Warp Speed vaccine program, told CNN’s ‘State of the Union’ that US officials “don’t know yet” if the variant is present in the country.
“We are, of course… looking very carefully into this,” including at the National Institutes of Health and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, he said.
At the moment, he added, no strain of the Covid-19 virus appears to be resistant to the vaccines available.
“This particular variant in the UK, I think, is very unlikely to have escaped the vaccine immunity,” Slaoui said.
