variants and alerting the world. twl at least two cases have been discovered in the uk and that s prompting immediate goveaction the government. reporter: swwarning signs. boris johnson announced up in covid restrictions as fears and questions grow over the new omnicron coronavirus variant. johnson says the variant has already been detected in the uk and scientists warn this highly mutated strain, first identified circulating in countries in southern africa, could challenge some of the hard-fought advances already made against this virus. our scientists are learning more, hour by hour. and it does appear that omnicron spreads very rapidly. and can be spread between people who are double vaccinated. england s chief medical officer, chris witty, says the possibility that vaccines may not be as effective against the omnicron variant is what is galvanizing the government
their first cases of the omnicron variant. nadia bashir, cnn, london. many countries are tightening their borders over fieears of t new variant, including south korea. for more on that, i m joined by paula hancocks from seoul. looking across asia, i guess more restrictions are on the way now in the face of this new variant? it appears so, kim, yes. and ironically, just a week ago, we were talking about living with covid. we were talking about how many different countries around asia and the world were really starting to open up and lift some of those restrictions. here in south korea, it was very similar, four weeks ago, they eased curfews on certain businesses. more people could gather, even if they were unvaccinated in some cases, but now we are expecting potentially these eased restrictions to be walked back. what south korea has done, which is what many countries have
going to last a minimum of two weeks. that is a decision that is going to hurt the israeli economy. israel just reopened for tourism a couple of weeks ago. but the facts that the israeli government is pushing ahead with it shows you just how determined they are to keep this variant out. now, as you said, in the last couple of hours, dutch authorities have announced that they have found 13 cases of omnicron among passengers who were on those last two flights from south africa to the netherlands on friday. and this was pretty stunning. on those two flights, there were 61 people who tested positive for both omnicron and other forms of covid. so they are going to get a lot of questions about how those people were able to get on planes and make it to the netherlands. ali? raf, thanks very much. as always, we ll stay close to you and your reporting on this. nbc s raf sanchez is in tel aviv, israel. fears of an omnicron
this and other variants. it s true for alpha, beta, gama and delta, all the variants we ve been dealing with, current vaccinations, particularly full vaccination and boosted vaccination provides very good protection. that s why we believe, even looking at the enormous number of mutations in this omnicron variant, that vaccination very likely to protect against severe disease. but you re right, if vaccination dropped below 50%, we would have to really seriously consider the use of modified vaccines. i think that s unlikely, but we re having to wait for laboratory testing. it s going to twake two or thre weeks for us to fully understand whether immunity induced by vaccines will protect sufficiently to prevent severe disease with this new variant. many are blaming this on the fact that we haven t vaccinated the world population as well as we should have done.
deliberate and has been repeated throughout this pandemic and that it might be extending to whenever there s a new variant that s come in that everyone else from the african continue tent is a target, at risk, when they re traveling especially in the west, in north america, in europe, that that s a real fear. which might explain why somebody like me who flew in from east africa is still required to test and getting an email from the health ministry here in france saying, you came from a country where a variant was discovered, when that s just not true. yeah. that s shocking. listen, really appreciate your perspective there. larry madowa joining us live from paris. and israel is now barring foreigners from entering the country for two weeks due to fears over the omnicron variant. the move starting sunday night makes israel the first country to completely shut its borders in response to the new variant. israel is also imposing