Q&A: What do we know about the new Covid variant?

Minister for Justice Helen McEntee has said that if hotel quarantine measures are required to deal with the new South African variant “then that's what we will do.”

The European Union’s executive has said it wants to stop air travel from southern Africa to counter the spread of a new Covid-19 variant.

Scientists are still trying to determine whether the new variant, called B.1.1529, is more transmissible or more lethal than previous ones, but it does have the most mutations of any strain yet identified.