Oslo tightens virus curbs after finding UK strain

OSLO: The Norwegian government announced on Saturday a crackdown in the capital region with the strictest restrictions since last March after the discovery of the British coronavirus variant in a retirement home.

Only essential shops can remain open and municipalities will be allowed to close primary schools and put secondaries on remote learning. People are being asked to restrict movements and not to eat meals outside their family.

"We are putting in place the strictest measures since last March in 10 districts," said Health Minister Bent Hoie. "In some places we are going even further than in March," he told a press conference, adding that it will make "daily life difficult for many".

All public events, indoors and outdoors, are cancelled apart from burials. Restaurants will be limited to takeaway services. The measures will remain in force until at least January 31 following the detection of the British variant in a home at Nordre Follo, 30-km from Oslo.

Two pensioners at the home, aged over 90, were found to have died with the variant, the public health institute said on Friday. A total of 22 employees and 12 retirees have been found to have coronavirus at the home but it has yet to be established if they have the variant.

The authorities have so far been unable to trace the origin of the cluster or a link with Britain. "We are doing what we can to stop this with strong measures in order to regain control quickly and lift the toughest measures," the minister said.

The virus strain that has swept Britain and beyond could be more deadly as well as more transmissible, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Friday. The strain has also spread to more than 60 nations -- including China, where the pandemic began more than a year ago.Meanwhile, Sri Lanka’s health minister, who publicly endorsed sorcery and magic potions to stop surging coronavirus infections in the island, has tested positive and will self-isolate, officials said on Saturday.Pavithra Wanniarachchi had publicly consumed and endorsed a magic potion, later revealed to contain honey and nutmeg, manufactured by a sorcerer who claimed it worked as a life-long inoculation against the virus.

She also poured a pot of "blessed" water into a river in November after a self-styled god-man told her that it would end the pandemic. The island nation of 21 million on Friday approved the emergency use of the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University only hours after Wanniarachchi tested positive, officials said.

"Her antigen test returned positive on Friday and she has been asked to isolate herself," a health ministry official said. "All her immediate contacts have been quarantined." A junior minister who had also taken the potion made popular by Wanniarachchi tested positive for the virus earlier this week.

Doctors in the island nation have said there is no scientific basis for the syrup, and there is no known cure for Covid-19. But thousands defied public gathering restrictions to swamp a village in central Sri Lanka last month to obtain the elixir, made by carpenter Dhammika Bandara.

Family members of another politician, who hailed from Bandara’s village, have also been infected after taking the syrup. Pro-government media gave widespread publicity to the holy man, who claimed the formula was revealed to him by Kali, a Hindu goddess of death and destruction.

But the government has since scrambled to distance itself from Bandara, whose preparation was approved as a food supplement by the official indigenous medicine unit. Sri Lanka is in the grip of a coronavirus surge, with the number of cases and deaths soaring from 3,300 and 13 in early October to nearly 57,000 infections and 278 dead this week.