The United Kingdom was stuck in COVID-19 isolation on Tuesday after much of the world cut off travel ties due to a highly infectious new coronavirus strain, snarling one of Europe’s most important trade routes just days before the Brexit cliff edge. Slideshow ( 3 images ) With queues of trucks snaking to the horizon in England and supermarket shelves stripped just days before Christmas, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson scrambled to get French President Emmanuel Macron to lift a ban on freight from Britain. Johnson and his advisers said the mutated variant of the novel coronavirus, which could be up to 70% more transmissible, was spreading rapidly but that it had been identified because British scientists were so efficient at genomic surveillance. The BBC cited France’s Europe Minister Clément Beaune as saying that Britain and France would announce a deal to restart freight by Wednesday. […]