LONDON – Britain on Tuesday surpassed 100,000 deaths due to the coronavirus, a tragic milestone that exposed the missteps in dealing with Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s pandemic, as well as the difficult choices he now faces over deadly new variants of the virus to try to keep away. of the country.
Britain’s death toll has long been the worst in Europe, but a rapidly spreading variant of the virus has pushed the country’s daily death toll to levels not seen since the peak of the first pandemic in April, despite a national exclusion. Per capita, Britain’s death toll in the past week was the worst in the world.
“It is difficult to calculate the sadness in the gloomy statistics,” said a solemn Mr. Johnson said about the death toll of 100,162. ‘You will exhaust the thesaurus of misery. It is a horrific and tragic loss of life. ”
There is from mr. Johnson expects to discuss a mandatory hotel quarantine for travelers arriving in Britain from countries with dangerous outbreaks of the virus. But the details of the plan have not yet been finalized, testifying to its far-reaching economic implications and the logistical challenge of housing, feeding and monitoring thousands of passengers landing at UK airports.
Stricter travel restrictions aim to keep new variants from Brazil and South Africa from Britain. Among the proposals being considered is one that would require travelers from South Africa, South America and Portugal to be quarantined in hotels ten days after arrival.
This will push Britain towards Australia, which has used hotel quarantine in a mostly successful attempt to keep the virus out of its borders. But Britain will act as Australia months later and after the spread of its homemade variant has already overwhelmed hospitals.
In a conversation with reporters in Downing Street, Johnson did not want to dwell on the mistakes that have weakened the death toll in his handling of the crisis. As several reporters reminded him, the government once said the death toll would hold up to 20,000 as a success.
“I am deeply sorry for every life that was lost,” he said. Johnson said, adding that he accepts responsibility. “We really did everything we could, and continue to do everything we can to reduce loss of life.”
Johnson’s chief medical adviser, Chris Whitty, was more reflective and acknowledged that some issues could be better addressed. In the early days of the pandemic, experts said that experts did not fully understand the importance of face masks, nor did they adequately understand the significance of asymptomatic transmission. As the crisis began to escalate, Mr. Whitty said the medical profession has developed new and improved ways to treat Covid patients.
For mr. Johnson said the pandemic has become a cruel race between vaccinating the population and withholding new variants, which could fuel another increase in infections. On the vaccine front, Britain is still making great strides, injecting 6.8 million people, the fastest pace of any major country.
But in other respects, the government still seems late and disorganized. In the itinerary, some health experts argue that nothing less than a hotel quarantine will not be effective. However, critics say the government would not be able to handle the logistical challenge as incoming passengers would quickly fill the hotels around London’s main gate, Heathrow Airport.
Britain’s plans come as the United States moves to tighten restrictions on overseas visitors. President Biden has revoked an order from former President Donald J. Trump that would ease travel bans on non-Americans from Britain, Brazil, South Africa and much of the European Union.
The new US rules, which went into effect on Tuesday, led to confusion at Heathrow Airport when British Airways turned away passengers bound by the US. It even included some that met the updated guidelines set by the Centers for Disease Control, which stipulated that they had to set up a negative coronavirus test or a doctor’s letter confirming that they had recovered from Covid and were no longer contagious.
For the travel industry, the quarantine would be the latest in a series of blows that have cost tens of thousands of jobs and propelled some companies, such as the Eurostar, across the canal, to the financial rand.
“It will be another nail in the coffin of the travel industry,” said Steven Freudmann, chairman of the Institute of Travel and Tourism, which is interested in the sector. “The industry understands the motives and we put the health of the country first, but what’s so frustrating is that the rules are literally changing week by week.”
In Britain, it seems that ‘the closing of the doors for us is too late for 12 months’, said Mr. Freudmann said, adding that the move would further erode confidence at a time when the sector is starting to recover.
Even those traveling to and from countries that are not considered high risk will worry that the risk status of the countries may change without warning while they are away. And while some hotels may benefit from quarantine passenger accommodation, it will be a short-term gain.
“Who wants to know that they have to spend ten days in a hotel and pay for the privilege?” Mr. Freudmann said.
From the outset, Britain’s travel policy has been marked by twists and turns. The government initially argued that restrictions would generally differ little, as the virus had already spread in Britain.
When, in July, when it suddenly moved to impose a quarantine on travelers from Spain, the Minister responsible for aviation policy, the Secretary of Transport, Grant Shapps, was embarrassed while on holiday – in Spain .
Under the rules that apply last summer, travelers from a range of countries at lower risk were exempted from the requirement to isolate themselves. But the list was revised every week, deciding to take a gamble for vacationers, thousands of whom were abroad while changes took effect.
Britain was slow to impose requirements on travelers to show a negative result on the coronavirus test, and, when done recently, struggled to provide enough staff to check those arriving there, and this caused pressure scenes in some airport arrival halls.
Some critics argue that the problem with the British system is a lack of enforcement, not only to put travelers in quarantine, but also for Britons who are asked to stay home after testing positive for the virus, or in contact was with someone who had it.
“The elephant in the room here is the number of people in the interior that we need to isolate ourselves and what it is not, and we really need to address that,” former health secretary Jeremy Hunt told Sky News said.