热点英语新闻9：变种病毒在港社区传播 港府禁印巴菲航班入境

Hong Kong to Ban Flights From the Philippines, India, Pakistan
变种病毒在港社区传播 港府禁印巴菲航班入境

transmissible
adj. 可传染的；可传送的
Capable of being transmitted by infection.

词语辨析
transmissible vs transmittable
Transmissible and transmittable are both adjective forms of the verb transmit. transmissible: once used similarly to transferable but now almost exclusively occurs in the context of contagious disease.
transmittable: rarely used outside of technological discussions about sound, light, or data.

例句
Although the H5N1 virus is highly infectious among poultry, it is not easily transmissible to humans.  
虽然H5N1病毒在禽类中具有高度传染性，但却不容易传播给人类。

All donors are screened for known transmissible diseases.
所有捐献者都进行了己知传染性疾病的筛选。


variant
n. 变体；变种
adj. 不同的；变异的；易变的
A form or version of something that differs in some respect from other forms of the same thing or from a standard.

词组
genetic variants 基因变体
splice variant 剪接变体

例句
The quagga was a strikingly beautiful variant of the zebra.
白氏斑马是一种极其美丽的斑马变种。

Recently, new variant strains have been detected in several parts of Asia and Africa.
最近，在亚洲和非洲的一些地区发现了新的变异菌株。


grind to a halt
停止；困住
Gradually slow down or lose momentum and then stop altogether.

例句
If that happens, the economy would really grind to a halt.
如果这种情况发生，那希腊经济就会陷入停顿状态。

If such behaviour is unchecked, then eventually the system may grind to a halt.
如果不对这样的行为加以限制的话，这一体系最终会陷入瘫痪。

Bloomberg has reported that Hong Kong will ban flights from India, Pakistan and the Philippines for 14 days starting Tuesday - as the city reported the first two Covid-19 cases of a highly transmissible virus variant in the community over the weekend.

Anybody who stayed in any of those three countries for more than two hours in the past 21 days will also be stopped from boarding any passenger flights to Hong Kong, as the government has now classified the countries as areas of quote “extremely high risk.” End quote.
    
So what is this new variant? What are the details?

Hong Kong has what’s called a circuit breaker arrangement which is triggered if there are five or more arrivals with the N501Y mutant coronavirus strain from a country within a seven-day period. Some of our listeners might know it as the South African variant as it was first detected there.

Neighboring Macao is not going to ban travel from these three countries but will require visitors who have been to them to quarantine for 28 days at a designated place upon arrival.

So, an important story for people from Pakistan, India and the Philippines and quite interesting for listeners in Hong Kong and Macao but why should the rest of us pay attention?

The story really illustrates that we are very far from life returning to normal. Even when things seem to have returned to relative normalcy all it needs is a few new cases, or a new variant to show up and important parts of the global air travel system can just grind to a halt.

This has serious consequences for anybody around the world who is still thinking about business travel or meeting and seeing clients in person.

It also begs the question of how best to limit the spread of the new variant. For example, Hong Kong quarantined 81 residents of a building in a densely populated Kowloon neighborhood on Saturday after a man who had traveled from Dubai initially tested positive for a mutant strain of Covid-19 virus.