Strict new requirements are coming for travelers who want to enter Britain from Monday, because they are worried about new mutations of the deadly coronavirus.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has introduced new rules requiring anyone traveling to Britain to have a negative coronavirus test within the previous 72 hours and to be isolated immediately for up to ten days, reports The Times of London.
Government data show that the number of patients hospitalized with coronavirus in the UK has risen by 35 per cent in the past week. The burden is on health workers.
The restrictions have no end date, but the government has said it will last at least a month. Since most holiday travel has already been banned, it is likely that the new rules will affect business travel and UK citizens returning from other countries.
The new rules begin days after the prime minister said the country’s vaccine program would last 24 hours a week, 24 hours a week. Johnson said that, following advances in vaccinations, “everything we do not want to see is undone by the advent of a new vaccine-containing variant,” The Times reported.
According to Johns Hopkins University, 55,885 cases in Coronavirus in the UK were reported on Saturday. It was lower than the record high of 68,192 on January 8th. New deaths reached 1,285, also less than the record of 1,568 deaths reached on Wednesday.
The virus has killed nearly 87,500 people in the UK, including 76,338 in England.