British Health Secretary Matt Hancock had said on December 14 that a spike in Covid cases in the United Kingdom might have been linked to the new variant of the virus in the country.
Hancock said more than 1,000 cases of the new variant had been identified, mainly in southeastern England.
Countries about the world have in recent days closed their borders to both Britain and SA after the identification of cases of the new, fast-spreading variant of the coronavirus in those countries.
France registered 20,262 new, confirmed Covid-19 cases and 159 more related deaths in hospitals in the last 24 hours.
France's number of confirmed Covid-19 cases now stands at 2,547,771 while its Covid-19 death toll stands at 62,427 — the seventh-highest in the world.