South Korea will suspend all passenger flights from the United Kingdom over worries about a new variant of the coronavirus, health officials said Wednesday.

Yoon Tae-ho, a senior official at the Ministry of Health and Welfare, told a virtual news briefing that air travel from the UK will be barred from Wednesday until Dec. 31.

Korea’s two domestic airlines together operate direct routes to and from London‘s Heathrow Airport four times a week. Korean Air will still fly planes from Incheon to London, while Asiana Airlines will halt all flights between the cities. In total, five inbound flights and one outbound flight will be canceled over the period.

“These are precautionary measures decided in a meeting with other ministries Tuesday afternoon to prevent the mutant virus found in the UK from reaching Korea,” Yoon said.

In addition to the short-term suspension of air travel, starting Jan. 1 those arriving from the UK will be subject to PCR testing at the end of the mandatory 14-day isolation period. Passengers with temperatures of at least 37.3 degrees Celsius, as opposed to the standard 37.5 degrees Celsius, will be classified as symptomatic, he said, to be tested immediately at the airport. Flight crew members will get PCR tests regardless of symptoms.

Not all travel links have been suspended. Freight routes are not affected by the new restrictions. It is also still possible for people to come here from the UK after stopping by other countries, Yoon explained.

The variant discovered in the UK has the potential to spread faster than other variants, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency’s Deputy Director Kwon Jun-wook.

“Depending on the analysis, the new variant is estimated to be between 50 to 70 percent more contagious compared with other variants that have been circulating in the past months,” he said in Tuesday’s briefing.

“So far, we have yet to report a case of the new COVID-19 variant here,” said Yoon of the Health Ministry.

Korea now joins a growing list of countries enacting border restrictions on entry for travelers from the UK. For the last two weeks, between Dec. 10 and Wednesday, Korea confirmed 406 cases linked to international travel.

Korea on Wednesday counted 1,092 more cases -- 1,060 locally transmitted and 32 imported -- with the cumulative number of official cases now reaching 52,550.

Currently, there are 15,085 patients with active infections under isolation. The number of severely or critically ailing patients has increased markedly to 284 from 226 a week ago.

Seventeen more people died due to COVID-19. So far, 739 have lost their lives to the disease here.

Following a series of deaths among patients who could not be admitted due to hospital bed shortages, the government said Wednesday it aims to reduce the number of patients on the waitlist to no more than 100 a day. At one point last week, nearly 600 patients had waited for more than a day for treatment.

Amid a severe shortage in hospital beds, the government over the weekend ordered hospitals to empty some of their intensive care unit beds for accommodating patients with COVID-19 by the end of this year.

By Kim Arin (arin@heraldcorp.com)