Photographer: Simon Dawson / Bloomberg
Photographer: Simon Dawson / Bloomberg
The British government is “actively” working on a plan to quarantine travelers in hotels to protect against coronavirus infections from overseas, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said.
“We want to make sure we protect our people, protect this country from re-infection from abroad,” Johnson said, adding that the UK should consider that there is ‘at least a theoretical risk’ that a new variant of the disease may be immune to the vaccines. his government is rolling out. “The idea of looking at hotels is definitely one thing we’re actively working on right now.”
In a joint broadcast interview on Monday, the prime minister also warned that lifting the closure rules too quickly could pose the risk of a new outbreak of infections in the UK, amid increasing pressure from members of his Conservative party for a time frame to set up for the reopening of the economy.
Ministers had earlier promised to ease restrictions once the target was reached to vaccinate nearly 15 million people who are considered the most vulnerable to the disease, which Johnson says will be up and running by mid-February.
Death number
But with the UK’s total death toll likely to exceed 100,000 this week and infections still high – although it is declining, there are growing indications that the timetable for lifting the exclusion may decline, possibly until the summer.
This alarmed prominent Tories, including Mark Harper and Steve Baker, who led the demands to the government to make plans for lifting the exclusion, and in particular to reopen schools, and the criteria they would use for it.
“Once the defenseless are protected, the first priority should be to reopen schools,” Harper said on Twitter on Monday.
Johnson reiterated that his government’s priority is to reopen schools as soon as possible, although lifting the exclusion must be done in a “responsible, prudent manner”.
Infection rate
“I want to do nothing more than reopen schools,” he said. “We want to do it in a way that is consistent with fighting the epidemic and keeping the rate of infection at bay.”
Johnson’s government sees vaccines as the UK’s unlockable ticket, and is considering further tightening border controls to eliminate strains that could undermine the effectiveness of the doses. Ministers are expected to make a decision this week on whether to quarantine travelers in hotels, as countries such as Australia and Singapore have done.
To date, the UK has given a first dose of the vaccine to more than 6.3 million people, vaccinating around 8.7 million elderly and vulnerable people over the next three weeks to reach Johnson’s target.
The UK uses shots developed by Pfizer Inc. in collaboration with BioNTech SE, and by AstraZeneca Plc collaborates with the University of Oxford. A third vaccine developed by Moderna Inc. developed has been approved, but the first deliveries are only expected in the spring.
“AstraZeneca is committed to delivering two million doses a week to the UK, and we do not expect any changes to that,” Johnson’s spokesman Jamie Davies told reporters when asked about the deployment of vaccines. Work on Pfizer’s plant in Belgium means that ‘stocks will be lower this month and next year’ than previously expected, but then increase, so that the total volume ‘will remain the same for January to March.’
(Updates detailing the vaccination program in the last three paragraphs)