Get all your news in one place.
100’s of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading

UK to announce hotel quarantine for Britons returning from 30 high-risk countries - Times

FILE PHOTO: People queue at terminal 5 of Heathrow Airport, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues, London, Britain January 22, 2021, in this image obtained from social media. Picture taken January 22, 2021. Pia Josephson/via REUTERS

The British government will on Wednesday announce plans for limited hotel quarantine for Britons returning from 30 high-risk countries covered by a travel ban, the Times reported on Wednesday.

These countries include South America, Portugal, Cape Verde and South Africa, the report added.

Separately, Johnson has rejected calls by interior minister Priti Patel for a temporary closure of borders, the newspaper reported, adding Patel had pushed for a travel ban to stop potentially vaccine resistant strains of coronavirus being imported into the country.

Johnson has said he was looking at the option of introducing quarantine hotels for those coming to Britain to prevent the risk of "vaccine-busting" new coronavirus variants entering the country.

The bosses of airlines including British Airways, Virgin Atlantic and easyJet criticised on Tuesday a possible plan for mandatory quarantine in hotels for some or all arrivals to Britain and called for a support package.

Britain has suffered a sharp rise in infections and deaths in the new year, fuelled partly by a new more highly contagious variant of the virus first identified in southeast England.

The death toll in Britain from the coronavirus pandemic passed 100,000 people on Tuesday.

(Reporting by Aishwarya Nair and Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Chris Reese and David Gregorio)

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100’s of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.