from smuggling gangs. and coming up in the sport on the bbc news channel. mixed fortunes for british sides in europe defeat for celtic in germany means they fail to qualify from their europa league group. good evening. the health secretary, sajid javid, says scientists are deeply concerned about a new variant of coronavirus that s been discovered in south africa. as yet it hasn t been detected here in the uk, but the government is now suspending all flights from south africa, namibia, zimbabwe, botswana, lesotho and eswatini. 59 cases have been confirmed so far, and speaking in the last hour, mrjavid said the variant may be the most infectious yet. from what we do know there s a significant number of mutations, perhaps double the number of mutations that we have seen in the delta variant. and that would suggest that it may well be more transmissible and the current vaccines that we have may well be less effective. our medical editor fergus walsh is here. do we have any idea