Senior Cabinet minister Michael Gove said a list of nations from which travellers must quarantine in hotels on arrival in the UK is to be reviewed.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We will be reviewing today how extensive that list of countries needs to be and we will be guided by advice from our scientific advisers and we will be reporting back later on where the line will be drawn.”
Pressed whether greater border measures should have been imposed in March, he said: “There has been a lively debate about what we should or should not have done then. I don’t intend to add my voice to that debate.
“I think there will be an appropriate moment to review all the decisions this Government and others have taken during the pandemic.”
The Government has announced travellers arriving from 'high-risk' countries will need to spend their isolation in ‘quarantine hotels’.
People arriving in the UK will now be met at the airport and transported to 'government provided accommodation'.
Similar hotels already exist in Australia and New Zealand, which see travellers escorted from airports to the hotels, where they must stay in their room for the full self-isolation period.
However, the new quarantine hotels won’t be mandatory for all UK arrivals - just those who are travelling back from named countries.
There are currently 30 countries on the 'red list'
Travel is already banned completely for non-Brits who have been in those 30 countries in the last 30 days.
This will run alongside other rules for UK arrivals such as being required to take a Covid-19 test 72 hours before departure with proof of a negative result.
Full list of countries included in 'quarantine hotels' policy
- Angola
- Argentina
- Bolivia
- Botswana
- Brazil
- Cape Verde
- Chile
- Colombia
- Democratic Republic of Congo
- Ecuador
- Eswatini
- French Guiana
- Guyana
- Lesotho
- Malawi
- Mauritius
- Mozambique
- Namibia
- Panama
- Paraguay
- Peru
- Portugal (including Madeira and the Azores)
- Seychelles
- South Africa
- Suriname
- Tanzania
- Uruguay
- Venezuela
- Zambia
- Zimbabwe
