People sit on a London Underground train on Thursday. AP

France imposed travel restrictions on travellers from Britain on Thursday due to surging COVID-19 cases there, and several European countries also strengthened border controls on visitors from other EU states.

Plans for Christmas celebrations in Europe and many countries across the globe have been thrown into disarray by the rapid spread of the highly infectious Omicron variant, which emerged in Hong Kong and Southern Africa last month.

Soaring Omicron cases left Britons scrambling on Thursday to make alternative Christmas plans, faced with cancellations, long queues for vaccines and France shutting the border to UK visitors.

Workers clean a high speed train parked at a SNCF depot station in France. Reuters

Travel industry officials have expressed dismay at French restrictions on arrivals from Britain, describing the new rules to prevent the spread of the omicron variant as a hammer blow to the industry. Britain recorded a second consecutive record daily number of new COVID-19 infections at more than 88,000 but the government has so far stopped short of formal limits on socialising as it awaits further evidence of the severity and impact of the new Omicron variant.

In a bid to curb the spread of Omicron across the Channel, the French government announced it would ban non-essential travel to and from the UK from Saturday, for both unvaccinated and fully jabbed non-residents.

The sudden announcement sparked anxiety and even panic among would-be travellers scrambling to cross the Channel in time for Christmas.

“I have friends who are panicking,” London-based Marie Geoffroy, 43, told AFP at St Pancras station as she prepared to board a Eurostar train.

People sit at outside tables in Covent Garden Market, in London. AP

British hospitals were struggling to maintain staffing levels due to people having to isolate with COVID-19, a senior medic said. The 95-year-old Queen Elizabeth cancelled a pre-Christmas lunch with her family as a precaution.

The Dutch royal family is forced to apologise after inviting 21 people to the 18th birthday party of the future queen in breach of virus guidance as the country extends a night-time lockdown because of rocketing cases.

Sweden said it would require visitors from other Nordic nations to have a vaccine pass amid a jump in new infections in recent days. The Palestinian health ministry reported its first cases of the Omicron variant in the territory.

Across the globe in Asia, South Korea said spiraling infections meant it too would reinstate strict rules constraining gatherings and closing restaurants, cafes and bars early.

A woman receives a shot of Pfizer vaccine in London. AFP

South Korea is to reimpose curfews on bars, restaurants and cinemas and limit the size of gatherings again as record infections force the government to pause its plan to live with COVID-19. At a summit of EU leaders in Brussels, tensions arose after Italy, Portugal and Greece said they would require people crossing their borders to have a negative COVID-19 test as well as a vaccine passport.

Latvian Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins said freedom of travel inside the EU’s border-free Schengen Area must not end. England’s chief medical officer Chris Whitty said vaccinations could cut the numbers admitted to intensive care and shorten the time spent in hospital. Travel operators and retailers said the tightening of COVID regulations would hit them hard in the run-up to Christmas.

The impact was also being felt across the world of sport, from international and elite level down to grassroots. Hundreds of amateur clubs in Britain across a range of sports have cancelled weekend fixtures and closed clubhouses, despite there being no government advice to do so. A fourth Premier League match of the week was cancelled on Thursday after Brentford manager Thomas Frank called for all games in the coming week to be postponed to allow clubs to recover their depleted squads.

The EU’s drug regulator on Thursday allowed member states to use Pfizer’s new COVID-19 pill ahead of its formal approval, as an emergency measure to curb an Omicron-fuelled wave. Pills like those by US pharma giant Pfizer and rival Merck have been hailed as groundbreaking because they do not need to be injected or taken intravenously, making them more accessible. Pfizer said this week that its Paxlovid pill reduced hospitalisations and deaths in vulnerable people by almost 90 per cent.

Agencies