Ontario to enter ‘provincewide shutdown’ on Boxing Day The new cases come as the federal government began halting all incoming flights from the United Kingdom for 72 hours in a bid to quell the spread of a potentially more transmissible variant of the virus, which has been running rampant in Britain.A statement from Health Canada Sunday evening said the strain has not yet been identified in the country, but added that work continues to determine whether it is present.However, while the new variant may be more transmissible, the World Health Organization said vaccines which were recently approved to combat the virus should still be effective.Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead for COVID-19, also said the mutated variant may be.